[English] Subject-Verb (S-V) agreement in a Sentence: A Simple Exercise From my previous post, let us continue from where we left off. Remember! "A verb with 's' is singular; a noun with 's' is plural". Let me show you another example of a simple sentence: Tom, and his sister, Kim cleans the car. Can you tell me if the S-V Agreement in this sentence is correct? : : : : : : : : : : Nope, the S-V Agreement in this sentence is incorrect. Let us again analyze: Tom, and his sister, Kim cleans the car. In this sentence, there are already TWO people doing the action, that is Tom and Kim. Tom and Kim are two PROPER that are doing the action. It is therefore already safe to conclude that the SUBJECT of the sentence is PLURAL. If you take note of the verb CLEANS, it is in singular form (as what the quote states). Then, this makes our sentence incorrect. Tom and Kim = PLURAL cleans = SINGULAR That's WRONG! So, if you've got a pen and paper with you, try to modify the sentence to make it correct and refer to a few lines below for the correct answer. : : : : : : : : : : : : : The correct answer is: Tom, and his sister, Kim clean the car. There, I hope you understood my brief discussion about this. Always remember to make your subjects agree to their verbs or else, you shall be executed by grammar nazis all over the world. Haha. Kidding aside, I hope you enjoyed learning! Hit me up if you have further questions. I'd gladly be of help. :)

[English] Subject-Verb (S-V) agreement in a Sentence This in assumption that: a) You already have a basic knowledge in the different figures of speech (i.e. nouns, pronouns, verbs, etc.). b) You already know the basic parts of a simple sentence, namely the subject and the predicate. c) You already have an idea of the singular and plural concept. Definition of Terms (well, in my own words) ----------------------------------------------------- Subject - The subject of a sentence is a word that is "being talked about". It may be a noun or a pronoun. Usually, the subject of a sentence is the "doer" of the action. Subject identification often answers the question "Who or What is being talked about?". Verb - Verbs are action words. In a simple sentence the predicate usually begins with a verb. Sample Sentence: Tom cleans the car. In this sentence, let us identify the subject. To aide you with that, let me ask you again. Who is washing the car? Yep, that's right, it is Tom. Therefore, the subject in this simple sentence is TOM. Now, let us identify the verb. What is the action word in the sentence? It is "washes". So, your subject is TOM and the verb is WASHES. Always remember that in a sentence, the subject and verb must always agree with each other. The revolving idea in S-V Agreement is that if the subject is singular then the verb must also be singular. If the subject is plural, then the verb must also be plural. In our previous sample sentence, we all can say that Tom is a singular noun, therefore, our verb clean, must also be singular. Let me share with you a quote my English teacher taught me back then: "A verb with 's' is singular; a noun with 's' is plural". (repeat 100x for you to remember) This quote is generally applied to regular verbs and common nouns, but nonetheless rather helpful. This particular quote has actually helped me through a lot of exams. ;) So, back to analysis. In this case, the subject TOM does not really fit the quote since Tom is a Proper noun. But we all know that Tom is only ONE person. This means that the subject Tom is SINGULAR. Now, for our verb CLEANS. If you refer again to the quote, it says there that a verb with 's' is singular. So, you are right on track, CLEANS is already in its singular form. So, Tom - singular cleans - singular Then, congratulations! Your subject and verb are already in agreement. See [English] Subject-Verb (S-V) agreement in a Sentence: A Simple exercise for continuation on the discussion.