SAT Reasoning

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Identifying Subject Verb Agreement Errors Identifying Errors in Agreement For Nouns Pronouns How to Identify Errors in Adjectives Adverbs And Nouns Agreement Sentence Agreement Avoiding Faulty Collective Ownership How to Identify Errors in Comparison Correlation Parallelism

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SAT Reasoning: Identifying Errors in Sentence Structure
How to Identify Errors in Adjectives Adverbs And Nouns Agreement

This lesson would help you in agreeing the errors of Adjectives, Adverbs, and Nouns.A specific manner must be followed to make the sentence effective. One of the elementary unit is agreement. In fact, agreement is defined as to make the specific words agree with the other words.

How to Identify Errors in Adjectives Adverbs And Nouns Agreement

Parts of a Sentence

In language writing, Sentences are the elementary unit. A specific manner must be followed to make the sentence effective. One of the elementary unit is agreement. In fact, agreement is defined as to make the specific words agree with the other words.

First we discuss the parts of a sentence in order to learn the agreement easily. As you know that a sentence is composed of a subject and a predicate. The subject is the main noun doing the action, while the predicate follows the subject.

So,

Noun is a person, place or thing, and a Verb is the action word in the sentence.

These are all basics which assist us in Agreement.

Subject Verb Agreement

Subject verb agreement is the most important notion you have to learn for sentences building. Subject verb agreement defines as the rule that all verbs must match the subject. For singular subject use singular verb and for plural Subject use plural verb. We will discuss these next:

Singular Subjects

In subject verb agreement if error occurs, examine if your subject is singular. Then make sure your verb matches. Let’s see the example:

Jake has planned to only study mathematics this week.

Now look up subject and the verb first. Here Jake is the subject. 'Has planned', is the verb phrase. As Jake is singular subject so ‘has’ must be used rather than have which would make it plural.

Plural Subjects

Now in case of plural subject.

Jake and Clark have planned to only study mathematics this week.

In this sentence, there are 2 subjects both Jake and Clark. So, you must use the plural form of the verb, which is have.

The cat drinks the milk every day. (The subject 'cat' is singular. The verb 'drinks' matches.)
The cats drink the milk every day. (The subject 'cats' is plural. The verb 'drink' matches.)
He crosses the hurdle all the time. (The subject 'he' is singular. The verb 'crosses' matches.)
They cross the hurdle all the time. (The subject 'they' is plural. The verb 'cross' matches.)

Separated Subjects and Verbs

Separation of the subject and the verb by words or phrases also cause common error in subject verb agreement.. Look at the following sentence:

Jake and Clark, who both studied Mathematics and English last year, have planned to only study English this year.

Here is the phrase “who both played football and basketball last year”. These are separating the subject and the verb. The subject, Jake and Clark, is plural and therefore necessarily match the plural form of the verb 'have.'

Look at this example,

The fact that Jake didn't study for the test prevents her from securing an A. ('fact' is the singular subject, which matches the singular form of the verb 'prevents')

To avoid subject-verb agreement errors the key element is to ignore all the extra words and match the true subject of the sentence, not just the noun that is the closest.

Adjective and Adverbs

One more aspect in order to avoid error in agreement is that adjectives and adverbs must also agree with the words they adjust. So what is adjective? It is a word that modifies a noun. For adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective or another adverb.

Adjectives should matched with nouns always. Whereas, and adverbs must be matched with verbs, adjectives or adverbs always.

Many time when words end at ‘ly’ they are referred as adverb. Such as quick ly or 'quickly' must be matched with a verb, adjective, or adverb. Here is the example,

Ali is a quick runner.
Ali runs quickly.

Why is 'quick' used in the first sentence, but 'quickly' in the second? In the first sentence, 'quick' is modifying the word 'runner, which is a noun.

On the other hand, in the second sentence 'quickly' is modifying the word 'runs', which is a verb. You cannot write, ‘Ali runs quick.' This is the incorrect form as an adjective cannot modify a verb.

So modify the actual word in order to avoid this error.