Everyday Writer - Bedford, Freeman & Worth College Publishing ...

CHAPTER 32 Subject-Verb Agreement 283
5. It is/are a melancholy object to those who walk/walks through this great
town or travel/travels in the country, when they see/sees in the streets,
the road, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed
by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every
passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for
their honest livelihood, is/are forced to employ all their time in strolling
to beg sustenance for their helpless infants, who, as they grow/grows
up, either turn/turns thieves for want of work, or leaves/leave their dear
country to fight for the Pretender of Spain, or sell/sells themselves to
the Barbados. – JONATHAN SWIFT, “A Modest Proposal”
Have students edit the following sentences for verb agreement. In addition,
ask them to note carefully linking verbs, inverted-word order, and titles.
1. You need to know that both of them appeal/appeals to me.
2. Everybody in both classes was/were ready.
3. Some is/are here; others is/are not.
4. Every one of the details was/were perfect.
5. I like instructors who smile/smiles.
6. The 39 Steps demand/demands moviegoers’ rapt attention.
Have students underline the appropriate verbs in parentheses in the following
passage from “The Iks” by Lewis Thomas, a piece about a tribe in
Uganda.
The solitary Ik, isolated in the ruins of an exploded culture, (has/have) built a
new defense for himself. If you (lives/live) in an unworkable society, you can
make up one of your own, and this (is/are) what the Iks (has/have) done. Each
Ik (has/have) become a one-man tribe on its own, a constituency. Now everything
(falls/fall) into place. This is why they do (seems/seem), after all, vaguely
familiar to all of us. We’ve seen them before. This is precisely the way groups
of one size or another, ranging from committee to nations, (behaves/behave).
It is, of course, this aspect of humanity that (has/have) lagged behind the rest
of evolution, and this is why the Ik (seems/seem) so primitive. In his absolute
selfishness, his incapacity to give anything away, no matter what, he (is/are) a
successful committee.
FOR TEACHING: Collective-Nouns Subjects (32d)
Encourage students to think critically about collective nouns as wholes
or parts. Write this topic sentence on the board: The jury disagree/disagrees
on several details. Then ask students to decide whether to treat
jury as singular or plural, according to the following context: