 Some students struggle with certain conventions when they write. This is especially true when it comes to grammatical elements, like subject-verb agreement, pronoun antecedent agreement, verb forms, and parallelism. This lesson focuses on subject-verb agreement. The first thing we'll do is define these terms, subject, verb, and agreement. The subject is the word in a sentence that is the focus of the action, or who or what the sentence speaks about. For example, macaela is the subject in macaela went to the store. They is the subject in they lived a long time ago. The verb is the part of the sentence that is the action word, such as a word that describes what the subject is doing, will do, or has done. The verb and the subject always relate to one another. For instance, went is the verb in macaela went to the store. And lived is the verb in they lived a long time ago. Agreement refers to parts of a sentence that are similar in gender, number, and person. This is critical when dealing with nouns and verbs or pronouns and their antecedents. For noun verb agreement in the sentence, the man drove his car. The noun man and the verb drove would be in agreement. Well, now we have three new terms, gender, number, and person. So we will define these terms. Gender refers to classification groups such as masculine, feminine, and neuter. Number refers to one singular or two or more plural. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs are all affected by number. The man was 30 years old is an example of a singular noun and verb. They were all 15 years old is an example of a plural pronoun and verb. Person, this grammatical category applies to pronouns and verbs and is used to distinguish between the speaker of a sentence, who or what is being talked to and who or what is being talked about. There are three categories of person, first person, second person, and third person. We're going to put gender aside for this lesson and focus on number and to a limited extent person. As you have probably figured out by now, we like to use mnemonics to help us remember steps to take when doing activities. Here's another one for you. Wee-wee three. The I to the third means that I appears three times. Wee-wee three. What is the subject? Is the subject singular or plural? What is the verb? Is the verb singular or plural? If the subject is singular, is the verb singular? If the subject is plural, is the verb plural? Let's look at what each line means. Wee-wee three. What is the subject? It is important to be able to recognize the subject in a sentence. We look at a sentence and ask, what is being written about in this sentence? Usually, this is pretty easy to do, as in the sentence, Tom ran in the marathon. Tom is what is being written about, so Tom is the subject. Find the subject in this sentence. The girls walked their dogs. Girls is the subject. Another point deserves mention. Sometimes several words are found between the subject and the verb, and this can cause confusion as to which word is the subject. For example, consider this sentence. Mark, who is always among the fastest runners, lost the race by 20 feet. Here, the singular subject is Mark, but one could get confused by the clause, who is always among the fastest runners, because runners is plural. Again, the key is to remember to identify the person, place, and thing the sentence is about. In this case, Mark. Now let's look at the next step. Is the subject singular or plural? You probably remember that singular means one, and plural means more than one. So a singular subject in a sentence involves one person, place, or thing in a sentence. And a plural subject involves two or more people, places, or things. Remember our two sentences? Tom ran in the marathon, and the girls walked their dogs. Tom is singular because he is one person. Girls is plural, because it refers to more than one girl. Some sentences can be tricky. Take, for instance, this sentence. The box of oranges is in the fruit department. Here, box is the subject. Is it singular or plural? It's singular, but oranges is plural, so we could be fooled into thinking the subject is plural. Don't be fooled when you see sentences like this. Pronouns can be particularly important Pronouns can be particularly troublesome. Indefinite pronouns like someone, somebody, anybody, everybody, each, either one, everyone, or anyone are all singular pronouns that can serve as subjects. And some pronouns like any or all can be either singular or plural, depending on whether they mean a group of or separate individuals. While we're talking about pronouns, this is a good place to set aside a few minutes to deal with the first person, second person, and third person singular and plural pronouns. I is a first person singular pronoun, and when alone, always goes with a singular verb. You is a second person singular pronoun, but it always goes with a plural verb. You are, not you is or you am. He, she, and it are third person singular pronouns, and when alone, go with singular verbs. We is a plural first person pronoun, you is a second person plural pronoun, and they is a third person plural pronoun. I'll go with plural verbs. Let's pick up where we left off. Have you ever heard of compound subjects? When a subject has more than one person, place, or thing, and the words are connected by and, it is considered a compound subject and is plural. As an example, consider the sentences below. Tim and Jessica were friends. The cat, dog, and parrot are three pets. To hit, to run, and to field are the goals of baseball practice. Now let's go to our next step. What is the verb? By definition, a verb is an action word. What word describes the action in this sentence? The girls walked their dogs. Walked is the verb. Is the verb singular or plural? Verbs can be either singular or plural. Consider, for example, singular. Is, was, am, plural. Are, were, are. Many verbs can be both singular and plural, and the decision as to whether they are singular or plural depends on the subject. Look at these two sentences. I travel to Spain every year. Mary and Jane travel to Spain every year. In the first sentence, travel is singular, but in the second sentence, travel is plural. You just have to decide within the context of the sentence whether the verb is singular or plural, depending on the subject. The last two steps go together. If the subject is singular is the verb singular, and if the subject is plural is the verb plural. These steps ask us to examine the sentence for subject verb agreement. We use the information already presented to answer these questions, but there are some other points to be made. Do you remember our earlier discussion of compound subjects? There are specific instances that occur in sentences that need attention. Sometimes a compound subject in a sentence is made up of two singular subjects that are connected by the words either, or, or, neither, nor. In this case, the verb will be singular. Let's look at the following examples. Neither mom nor dad is home, and either Tim or Mary is going to be promoted to a higher position. Notice that the verb is singular. That is because of the words neither or either in the sentence. This is about the only time when you will have a compound subject with a singular verb. Finally, here's something else you will see that might cause confusion. Every once in a while, you will find a sentence where the subject comes after the verb instead of before it. For instance, under the bridge swims a lone duck. There were several large dogs on the field. In the first sentence, the subject is duck, even though it comes at the end of the sentence. The verb is swims. The subject and verb are singular. In the second sentence, the subject is dogs, and the verb is where. The verb where is plural because the subject, dogs, is plural. Keep an eye out for these types of sentences. They can be tricky. Congratulations! You have completed this activity, Subject Verb Agreement.