Conventions of Language: The Science Report
A Year 9 student has written a science report about a plant experiment. The teacher has marked several errors but not corrected them. The student wrote: 'The plants was placed in three different light conditions. Each plant receive 100 ml of water daily. The plant in the dark growed the least. Its leaves was yellow and it had fell over. The results shows that light is important for growth.' The teacher's comments say: 'Check subject-verb agreement, irregular verbs, and pronoun reference.' The student asks for help to understand the errors and fix them.
1. Identify and correct the subject-verb agreement errors in the student's report. Explain the rule you used.
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The subject-verb agreement errors are: 'The plants was placed' should be 'The plants were placed' because 'plants' is plural and takes 'were'. 'Each plant receive' should be 'Each plant receives' because 'each' is singular and takes the singular verb 'receives'. 'Its leaves was yellow' should be 'Its leaves were yellow' because 'leaves' is plural. 'The results shows' should be 'The results show' because 'results' is plural. The rule is that a verb must agree in number with its subject. A singular subject takes a singular verb (e.g., 'each plant receives'), and a plural subject takes a plural verb (e.g., 'the plants were', 'the results show'). Note that 'each' is always singular even though it refers to multiple plants.
2. Correct the irregular verb errors and explain what makes them irregular.
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The irregular verb errors are: 'growed' should be 'grew' (simple past of 'grow'), and 'had fell' should be 'had fallen' (past participle of 'fall'). 'Grow' is irregular because its past tense is not formed by adding -ed; it changes to 'grew' and its past participle is 'grown'. 'Fall' is irregular because its past tense is 'fell' and past participle is 'fallen'. The student wrote 'had fell', which uses the past tense form after 'had' instead of the past participle 'fallen'. The correct sentence is: 'The plant in the dark grew the least. Its leaves were yellow and it had fallen over.' Regular verbs like 'place' and 'receive' add -ed for past tense, but irregular verbs do not follow that pattern.
3. The teacher mentioned pronoun reference. Find a pronoun in the report that could be unclear and suggest a revision.
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The pronoun 'it' appears in 'it had fell over'. The preceding sentence is 'Its leaves was yellow and it had fell over.' The pronoun 'it' could refer to 'the plant' or possibly 'the leaves', though context suggests the plant. However, because 'its leaves' is the subject of the first clause, 'it' in the second clause might be momentarily ambiguous. A clearer revision would be: 'Its leaves were yellow, and the plant had fallen over.' This replaces the pronoun 'it' with the explicit noun 'the plant', removing ambiguity. Alternatively, 'The plant's leaves were yellow and it had fallen over' is acceptable because 'it' clearly refers to 'the plant' as the main subject. The key is to ensure the pronoun has a clear and nearby antecedent.