{"id":13463,"date":"2017-01-30T07:16:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T12:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grockit.com\/gmat\/?p=198"},"modified":"2020-09-11T20:42:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T20:42:26","slug":"gmat-verbal-subject-verb-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/gmat\/gmat-verbal-subject-verb-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT Sentence Correction: Subject-Verb Agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Subject-verb agreement may seem very basic, but it will most certainly be tested on the GMAT sentence corrections. You can apply\u00a0many of the same considerations as pronoun-antecedent agreement for these questions. For a more complete overview of subject-verb agreement let’s look at some examples below.
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Singular and Plural Nouns<\/h4>
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\nYou must be careful to distinguish singular nouns from plural ones, even when the test-makers have made that tricky. For instance, check out the example\u00a0sentence below; there\u2019s a mistake. The subject of that sentence is \u201c[s]ubject-verb agreement,\u201d which is singular, but the verb, \u201cpose,\u201d is plural. Because the plural \u201ccorrections\u201d is placed between them, the plural verb SOUNDS right, but is in fact incorrect. Let\u2019s look at a couple more examples:
\nThe team of soccer players are represented by their mascot, a wild boar.<\/em>
\nThis sentence demonstrates the same common trick, which is that a singular subject (team) is associated with a plural noun (players); a plural verb (are) is then placed next to that plural noun, and the unwary test-taker, relying on his or her sense of what \u201csounds right,\u201d is lulled into thinking that the sentence is correct as written.
\nIncidentally, there\u2019s a second, similar issue here: the pronoun-antecedent monster rears its ugly head.\u00a0 While the test is busy tricking you into thinking that \u201cteam of soccer players\u201d agrees with a plural verb, it also throws in a plural pronoun, \u201ctheir.\u201d The correct possessive pronoun for a singular entity like a team is \u201cits.\u201d The corrected version of the sentence above might therefore look like this:
\nThe team of soccer players is represented by its mascot, a wild boar.<\/em>
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Modifying Phrase<\/h4>
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\nAnother trick that is used to cause subject-verb agreement confusion is the insertion of a modifying phrase between the subject and verb in order to distract from the proper agreement. An example of that would be a sentence like this:
\nA yoga studio, which is offering a wide variety of classes, are opening in my neighborhood.<\/em>
\nThe subject here is \u201c[a] yoga studio,\u201d which is singular. The phrase \u201cwhich is offering a wide variety of classes\u201d is offset by commas, which tells us that the information is not essential to the meaning of the sentence and is instead a modifying phrase. The best way to check subject-verb agreement in a sentence like this is by \u201clifting out\u201d that modifying phrase and reading the sentence without it. Thus, we can read it like this:
\nA yoga studio are opening in my neighborhood.<\/em>
\nNow we can see much more clearly that the singular subject does not agree with the plural verb. The correct singular verb for this sentence would be \u201cis,\u201d not \u201care.\u201d
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Complex Sentences<\/h4>
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\nHow do we handle it, though, when the GMAT throws a more complicated sentence at us? The key is to break it up into bite-sized pieces and address each of them individually until you can clearly identify any subject-verb agreement problems. Here\u2019s an example:
\nDespite the residents\u2019 requests, the Homeowner\u2019s Association Executive Board, which is made up of five members of the organization, haven\u2019t issued a warning<\/span> to those neighbors who have flouted the rules regarding lawn maintenance.<\/em>
\nThe two modifying phrases here\u2014\u201c[d]espite the residents\u2019 requests\u201d and \u201cwhich is made up of five members of the organization\u201d\u2014obscure the subject and the verb, and make their disagreement more difficult to identify. Again, \u201clifting\u201d those phrases out and reading around them can help. However, here we also have the issue of a singular noun (the Homeowner\u2019s Association Executive Board) that sounds plural, since it\u2019s made up of multiple people, but is in fact singular. The plural verb \u201chaven\u2019t\u201d is therefore incorrect in the sentence as written. There are a couple of ways to fix this, each of them equally viable as an answer choice on the GMAT.
\nDespite the residents\u2019 requests, the Homeowner\u2019s Association Executive Board, which is made up of five members of the organization, hasn\u2019t issued a warning<\/span> to those neighbors who have flouted the rules regarding lawn maintenance.<\/em>
\nDespite the residents\u2019 requests, the five members of the Homeowner\u2019s Association Executive Board haven\u2019t issued a warning<\/span> to those neighbors who have flouted the rules regarding lawn maintenance.<\/em>
\nIn the first version, we replace the plural verb with a singular one; in the second, the singular subject becomes plural by incorporating into it the modifying phrase. Either one works as a correction here.
\nRemember that on GMAT sentence corrections, it pays to keep your eyes open for errors that \u201csound\u201d fine AND your mind open for unexpected ways to correct those errors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Subject-verb agreement may seem very basic, but it will most certainly be tested on the GMAT sentence corrections. You can apply\u00a0many of the same considerations as pronoun-antecedent agreement for these questions. For a more complete overview of subject-verb agreement let’s look at some examples below.   You must be careful to distinguish singular nouns from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[55],"tags":[56,241],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13463"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36039,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13463\/revisions\/36039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}