Subject-Verb Agreement in a Student Draft
A first-year student submits the following paragraph as part of a draft for an academic writing course. The instructor has marked four sentences with grammar problems but has not explained them. The paragraph reads: 'One of the most important skill for university students are time management. Students who plans their week in advance tends to experience less stress. However, many students ignores the fact that a schedule must be realistic. If a student fill every hour with study, they will soon abandon the plan. My advisor, along with two other professors, have recommended that each student keep one unscheduled hour per day. This advice is easier to give than to follow, but it have helped me.' The instructor asks the student to revise the paragraph so that subjects and verbs agree and pronoun references are clear, while keeping the original meaning. The student has one tutoring session before the draft is due.
1. Identify the subject-verb agreement error in the first sentence and explain why the verb should be singular or plural.
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The sentence should read: 'One of the most important skills for university students is time management.' The grammatical subject is 'One,' not 'skill' or 'students.' 'One' is singular, so the main verb must be 'is,' not 'are.' The phrase 'of the most important skills for university students' modifies 'One' but does not change its number. There is also a noun-number issue: after 'one of the most important,' the noun should normally be plural ('skills'), because the writer is choosing one item from a group. The verb agreement error and the noun form error are separate but both need correction.
2. Revise the sentence 'Students who plans their week in advance tends to experience less stress' and explain two changes.
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A correct revision is: 'Students who plan their week in advance tend to experience less stress.' Two changes are needed. First, the relative clause verb 'plans' must agree with its plural subject 'who,' which refers to 'Students'; therefore 'plan' is correct. Second, the main verb 'tends' must agree with the main subject 'Students'; therefore 'tend' is correct. The pronoun 'their' is acceptable because it refers to the plural 'Students.' The original sentence fails because it mixes singular verb forms with a plural subject in two different clauses.
3. In 'My advisor, along with two other professors, have recommended...' what is the subject and why is the verb wrong? What pronoun issue appears in 'If a student fill every hour with study, they will soon abandon the plan'?
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The subject is 'My advisor,' which is singular. The phrase 'along with two other professors' is a parenthetical addition, not part of a compound subject joined by 'and,' so it does not make the subject plural. The verb should therefore be 'has recommended,' not 'have recommended.' In the next sentence, 'a student fill' is wrong because 'a student' is singular and the verb should be 'fills.' The pronoun 'they' can be used as singular 'they' in modern English, but in a formal academic draft it may be clearer to write 'he or she' or to recast the sentence in the plural: 'If students fill every hour with study, they will soon abandon the plan.'