Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Every day we'll be finding discussions of interesting and tricky questions from previous years. We will be finding 5-
10 Sentence Correction topics every day based on Most Common Errors tested on the GMAT:
parallelism errors,
pronoun errors,
modifier errors,
comparison errors,
idiomatic errors
Study those hand-picked tough and tricky questions which have not been discussed for at least a year or two (you may
have missed them otherwise) and review replies and tips from our expert team and prominent members.
Subject-Verb Agreement
Subject Verb agreement is the most commonly tested question type on the GMAT.
Every sentence has a subject and a verb which must agree in number.
The GMAT tries to make the subject of sentence as confusing as possible, so that you do not know whether the subject is
singular or plural.
The key to making subjects and verbs agree in GMAT sentence is to first determine whether the subject of each sentence
(or clause) is singular or plural.
There are two important review points pertaining to the Subject-Verb agreement
The key to making subjects and verbs agree in GMAT sentences is to find the subject that goes with a particular verb.
To find the subject, you must ignore all the words that are not the subject
A Singular subject requires a singular verb form: The dog runs out of the house.
A Plural subject requires a plural verb form: The dogs run out of the house.
REMEMBER: Only the third person singular subjects (e.g. he, she, it) takes the S ending. All other subjects use the
base form. (Except with the verb be)
2. Subject and Verb must make sense together.
THE MEANING PRINCIPLE: A CORRECT ANSWER MUST HAVE A CLEAR MEANING.
e.g. The development of a hydrogen car based on expected performance parameters will be able to travel hundreds of
miles without refueling.
The development of a hydrogen car..will be able to travel..? It is not the development that will be able to travel.
We want to say that the hydrogen car itself will be able to travel. Make sure that the subject and the verb actually
have a sensible meaning together.
Correct: Once developed, a hydrogen car based on expected performance parameters will be able to travel hundreds
of miles without refueling.
There are three types of interrupters commonly placed between the subject and the verb.
Appositives: Appositives are nouns, pronouns, or noun phrases that are placed next to nouns to further describe them.
Consider this Sentence: [i]The concert, featuring the Oak City Bango Kings, begin at 7.00.
Here the phrase featuring the oak.kings describes the subject The Concert. The sentence tries to confuse us by
ending the phrase with the plural kings.
To avoid such confusion, omit the part between commas, and the error will immediately become obvious.
Correct: The concert, featuring the Oak City Bango Kings, begins at 7.00
[ii] Relative Clauses: A part of the sentence preceded by relative pronoun modifying the antecedent.
Incorrect: The Spanish artist, who is one of the worlds leading exponents of salsa and is known to have taught
thousands of students, are living in exile.
Here the relative clause ends with the plural students confusing us whether to use are or is. We should note that the
main subject is Artist and main verb must agree with it.
Correct: The Spanish artist, who is one of the worlds leading exponents of salsa and is known to have taught
thousands of students, is living in exile.
[iii] Prepositional Phrases: Phrases beginning with preposition and ending with noun/pronoun modify the first
word (a noun or verb) in the relationship.
The subject is the plural Animals, so the verb must be the plural are.
In English, only the word "and" can give a plural subject. All other phrases (such as as well as, including, in addition
to) merely add extra information to the subject.
So when you see the sentence like one below, do not fall in to the trap. Eliminate the additive phrase and then
check Subject-verb agreement.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In the following two cases, even though two subjects are connected by and they will be
considered singular subject.
Case 1: If the parts refer to the same person or thing, or works as a single unit, then the verb should be singular
e.g. Strawberries and cream is a high calorie snack.
Case 2: If the compound subject is preceded by each or every (thus referring to each subject individually), then
the verb should be singular
e.g. Every freshman and transfer student is required to take student life.
A hint is to look at the word that follows the verb. If this word is singular, the verb most probably will be singular.
For example, in the sentence in Case 1, the singular word snack follows is and this implies that strawberries and
cream is a singular subject.
In either..or and neither ..nor structure, the verb always agree with the subject that is closer to it.
e.g. Neither the president nor his cabinet members are in Washington this week.
e.g. Neither the cabinet members nor the president is in Washington this week.
IMPORTANT NOTE: When either or neither is used in a sentence without the or or nor, then the verb has to be
singular.
e.g. Neither of johns friends is here.
A collective or group noun identifies a single entity that is composed of more than one unit: class, team, faculty,
majority, family, series, committee, audience, crowd.
Collective nouns are singular when they act as one unit.
e.g. The committee meets Friday at noon.
e.g. A majority is needed to pass the bill.
But if the context of the sentence emphasizes the individual members of the group, collective nouns are plural.
e.g. The committees meet each Friday at noon.
NOTE: On the GMAT, collective nouns are almost always considered singular and therefore require singular verb
forms. (Reference :- (1) Aristotle SC Grail, 3rd Edition, Page No 55. (2) MGMAT SC Guide 4th Edition, Page No 40.)
The number is singular: The number of acres destroyed by wildfires has increased dramatically over the past
several years.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Majority by itself is singular but when majority refers to a set of people it is plural.
e.g. A majority is always right.
e.g. A majority of students are right.
Examples:
Having good friends is a wonderful thing.
Whatever they want to do is fine with me.
Delivering pizzas is not a glamorous job, but it pays my bills.
Most of the indefinite pronouns are considered singular except for SANAM pronouns
Usually in a sentence the subject always precedes the verb, but sometimes the GMAT can reverse this order, so
that the verb comes before the subject.
Incorrect: Through the Golden Eagle Bridge passes thousands of vehicles every day.
In the above sentence, the singular verb passes is not referring to the singular Golden Eagle Bridge but to the
plural thousands of vehicles. Hence, the correct verb will be the plural pass.
Correct: Through the Golden Eagle Bridge pass thousands of vehicles every day.
Summing Up All