Subject and Verb Agreement

This is the rule that sounds wrong, and it sounds wrong for a good reason. Children spend years learning that s means more than one, and then the verb uses it to mean exactly one. Seeing the s move from one word to the other settles it faster than any amount of practice.

English: words and sentences · topic 6 of 6Grades 5 to 7Grammar8 min read7 practice questions

The s swaps sides

The subject and the verb have to agree about how many there are. One of something, or several.

What makes this hard is not the idea. It is that the s does the opposite job on a verb from the one it does on a noun, and a child has spent four years learning the noun version. Nobody warned them the letter would change sides.

Onedogbarks.One dog. The s is on the VERB.Twodogsbark.Two dogs. The s has moved onto the NOUN, and the verb has lost it.
Watch the gold s. One dog, and the s sits on the verb. Two dogs, and it has jumped to the noun and left the verb bare. Exactly one of the two words carries it.

The one s rule. In the present tense, either the noun has the s or the verb does. Never both, and never neither.

That is worth saying out loud a few times, because it turns a rule into something a child can check. The birds sings has two, so it is wrong. The bird sing has none, so it is wrong too. The test takes a second and does not need any grammar words at all.

Only the present cares

Here is the part nobody tells children, and it removes about half the work.

The past tense does not do any of this. One dog barked. Ten dogs barked. The verb is identical, and it stays identical for I, you, he, we and they. So if a sentence is in the past, there is nothing to check.

The same is true of the future. The dog will bark and the dogs will bark are both right, because will does not change either. So agreement is a present tense problem, and a child rewriting a story in the past has just made the whole issue disappear without realising it.

When the subject is far away

The rule is easy when the two words are next to each other. Almost every real mistake happens when they are not.

Theboxofapplesisonthetable.must matchThe verb matches box, not apples, even though apples is the nearer word.Theboxofapplesareonthetable.This is what a reader writes when they match the closest word instead.
Follow the arc, not the gap. The verb has to match box, which is four words away, and not apples, which is sitting right beside it.

Words like of apples, in the boxes and with my friends hang off the subject and describe it. They are never the subject themselves, so the trick is to cover them with a finger and read what is left: the box is on the table. It sounds right immediately, which it did not while apples was in the way.

And makes it plural. Or does not. My brother and my sister walk to school is two people, so the verb takes no s. But my brother or my sister walks to school is one of them, whichever it turns out to be, so the verb keeps its s. This one catches adults, and it is worth knowing rather than guessing.

Worked examples

Choose: My sister and my brother (walk / walks) to school.

Mysisterandmybrotherwalktoschool.must matchTwo people, so the subject is plural and the verb takes no s.
The arc reaches past everything in between. Two people are named, so the subject is plural.
  1. Find who is doing it. My sister and my brother.
  2. And has joined them, so that is two people, not one.
  3. Plural subject, so the noun side already carries the number.
  4. The verb goes bare: walk, with no s.

My sister and my brother walk to school.

Choose: The bag of books (is / are) heavy.

  1. What is heavy? The bag. One bag.
  2. Of books describes the bag, so cover it with a finger.
  3. The bag ... heavy. Now read it and listen.
  4. One subject, so the singular verb: is.

The bag of books is heavy.

Find the mistake: The children in my class enjoys art.

  1. Who enjoys it? The children, not the class.
  2. In my class is describing the children, so cover it.
  3. The children ... art. Children is plural.
  4. A plural subject takes the bare verb, so enjoys loses its s.

The children in my class enjoy art.

Common mistakes

Matching the nearest word

The box of apples are on the table. The writer has matched are to apples because apples is the word their eye had just landed on, and that is what eyes do. Covering the middle words is not a trick for exams, it is the actual method, and it works because it removes the word that was pulling.

Putting the s on both words

The birds sings. A child who has understood that s marks the plural adds it to everything plural, which here is both words. Say the one s rule back: either the noun or the verb, never the pair.

Checking agreement in the past tense

Some children, once taught this, start checking every verb in every sentence and slow their writing to a crawl. Past tense verbs do not change, so there is nothing to check, and saying that clearly gives them the time back.

Practice questions

Seven questions. One attempt each, and the explanation appears once the answer is in.

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What to learn next

For parents. Open any book at home and find a sentence where the subject and the verb are separated by three or four words. Ask your child to cover the middle with a finger and read what is left. Doing that on real sentences from a real book is worth more than a page of exercises, because the words in the way are what makes this hard and exercises usually take them out.

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