The Committee Report: Agreement, Tense and Reported Speech
A Class XII student has drafted a notice for the school notice board and a short report for the magazine. The teacher has marked six places but not corrected them:
- The committee have submitted their report last Friday.
- Neither the captain nor the players was satisfied with the new schedule.
- The coach said that he will send the revised list tomorrow.
- A copy of the report were placed on the notice board.
- The principal insisted to check the figures himself.
- We discussed about the delay for two hours.
The student argues that sentence 1 is correct because 'committee' is a plural noun, and that sentence 2 is correct because 'players' is nearer the verb. The teacher wants the student to explain each choice, not just copy corrections.
1. Correct sentences 1 and 2. Explain the agreement or tense logic, and say whether the student's reasons are valid.
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Sentence 1: 'The committee has submitted its report last Friday.' The present perfect is wrong with a finished past time ('last Friday'); use the simple past: 'The committee submitted its report last Friday.' If the report is still relevant now, 'has submitted' could stand only without 'last Friday'. The student's claim that 'committee' is plural is not a reliable reason: in British usage a collective noun may take a plural verb when members act individually, but here the committee acts as one body and the action is dated. Sentence 2: 'Neither the captain nor the players were satisfied with the new schedule.' With 'neither ... nor', the verb agrees with the nearer subject, 'players', so 'were' is correct. The student's reason is right here, but the original 'was' was wrong. In both cases, the correction must be justified by the structure of the sentence, not by a label alone.
2. Correct sentences 3 and 4. Name the principle involved, and rewrite sentence 3 as direct speech.
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Sentence 3: 'The coach said that he would send the revised list the next day.' When the reporting verb is in the past ('said'), the future 'will' shifts to 'would', and 'tomorrow' shifts to 'the next day' or 'the following day'. Direct speech: The coach said, 'I will send the revised list tomorrow.' The pronoun changes from 'he' to 'I' and the time word returns to 'tomorrow'. Sentence 4: 'A copy of the report was placed on the notice board.' The subject is 'a copy', singular, not 'report'; the prepositional phrase 'of the report' does not control the verb. So 'were' becomes 'was'. The two corrections look different but both depend on identifying the true head of the subject or the true time frame, rather than on the nearest noun or the original tense.
3. Correct sentences 5 and 6, explain the verb or preposition pattern, and combine them into one formal sentence.
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Sentence 5: 'The principal insisted on checking the figures himself.' The verb 'insist' takes the preposition 'on' before a gerund; 'insisted to check' is not standard. Sentence 6: 'We discussed the delay for two hours.' 'Discuss' is transitive and takes a direct object; 'discussed about' is an unnecessary preposition. Combined formal sentence: 'The principal insisted on checking the figures himself, and we discussed the delay for two hours.' The combination keeps both ideas but removes the faulty patterns. A candidate should note that the correction is not a matter of taste: 'insist on + -ing' and 'discuss + object' are fixed patterns. If the sentence is intended for a notice, the past tense may also need adjusting, but the grammar error is the priority.