Rahmatu Lawan
LESSON 1: SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT
Subject-verb agreement, also known as CONCORD, is the relationship that exists between a subject and a verb in English. In other words, your subject must agree with your verb in all grammatical relationships, such as the person, the number etc.
Concord is one of the tricky areas of learning English, especially for second language learners – people who had already learned another language before learning English. We see people with over 20 years of experience, learning and using the English language, but still having a slip of the tongue or genuinely making mistakes when it comes to stitching their subjects with their verbs in English.
Perhaps the best way to remedy the difficulties of mastering concord is to regularly practice. Another way could be to get hold of its knowledge and get our head around the skills.
Whichever way you are most comfortable with, practice is not an option; it is a must!
To learn about the subject-verb agreement in English it is important to understand the concepts of SUBJECT and VERB. What do we mean when we say subject or verb in English?
Another thing we should also know is the ENGLISH TENSE, that is, the different time frames through which our actions are expressed; in other words, do we speak about the past, the present or the future?
One can say there are three tenses in English: the present, the past and the future. But each of these three is further classified into more categories, for example, present simple, present continuous, present perfect and so on.
I will take each one of these to explain with examples and try my best to show you how subject-verb agreement is fused in all of them, and how best a learner can absorb the knowledge and demonstrate the skills.
SUBJECT and VERB
We will continue on SUBJECT and VERB in the next lesson in shaa Allah.
EXERCISE
Now, with the little explanation so far, let’s see in YOUR OWN WORDS, what do you understand by the concept CONCORD or SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT?
Write your answer in the comment section below.
Daga zauren @English Q & A