Grammar: Separating Real Errors from a Reviewer's Error
An editing workshop hands out four sentences from a student's essay on campus transport, each flagged by a different peer reviewer. S1: 'The number of students who commute by bus each morning have increased since the new timetable was introduced.' S2: 'Neither the drivers nor the supervisor was aware of the change.' A reviewer insists this must be 'were'. S3: 'Having checked the schedule twice, the bus arrived late anyway.' S4: 'If the university would provide more shelters, more students would wait for the bus.' The tutor asks the group to separate genuine errors from reviewer errors and to name the rule behind every fix. The class has ten minutes. One student argues that S4 is correct because 'would' appears twice in English conditionals, and several others agree with him, so the tutor asks for a decisive explanation rather than a show of hands.
1. Correct S1 and explain the trap it sets.
Read the worked answer
Correction: 'The number of students who commute by bus each morning has increased since the new timetable was introduced.'
The trap: the verb sits next to 'morning' and is followed by a plural noun ('students'), so proximity and meaning both pull towards 'have'. But the head of the subject is 'the number', which is singular. Everything from 'of' onwards is a modifier and cannot govern agreement.
Two reliable tests:
- Substitution: replace the whole subject with a pronoun - 'It has increased.' If 'it' works, the verb is singular.
- Cut the modifier: 'The number … has increased.'
The contrast that examiners like: 'The number of applicants has risen' (singular head) versus 'A number of applicants have withdrawn' (here 'a number of' functions as a quantifier meaning 'several'). Recognising that 'the number' and 'a number of' behave differently is the actual judgement being tested - not the memorised rule alone.
2. Is the reviewer right about S2? Justify your answer.
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No - the reviewer is wrong, and S2 should stand.
With 'neither … nor', the verb agrees with the subject nearer to it. The nearer subject is 'the supervisor', which is singular, so 'was' is correct. The plural 'drivers' is in the farther slot and does not control agreement.
A second route reaches the same answer: many style guides treat 'neither … nor' as taking a singular verb throughout, which also yields 'was'. So both the proximity rule and the strict-singular rule converge on 'was'. The reviewer's 'were' would be defensible only if the order were reversed - 'Neither the supervisor nor the drivers were aware'.
Why this matters for the exam: agreement items frequently include one option that is correct but looks wrong. A candidate who edits by ear rather than by rule will 'fix' correct sentences and introduce errors, which is penalised more heavily than leaving a correct sentence alone. When a flag depends on a proximity judgement, identify which subject is nearest before deciding.
3. Diagnose and repair S3 and S4, and address the student's 'would twice' argument.
Read the worked answer
S3 - dangling participle. 'Having checked the schedule twice' is a non-finite clause whose implied subject must be the subject of the main clause. Here that subject is 'the bus', which produces the absurd reading that the bus checked the schedule. Fix: 'Having checked the schedule twice, we still found the bus had left early.' The test is mechanical: ask 'who did the checking?' and make that the main-clause subject.
S4 - conditional tense. In a real future conditional, the if-clause takes present simple: 'If the university provides more shelters, more students will wait.' 'Would' in an if-clause is an L2 transfer error; the one genuine exception is the polite request ('If you would wait a moment'), which is not a conditional here.
The 'would twice' argument fails because the two clauses carry different functions - one sets a condition, the other states a consequence. Their surface similarity is not evidence. That is the reasoning to give the class: a pattern that merely repeats a word is not a rule; a rule explains why each position has a different job.