Diagnosing Jonah's Paragraph: Agreement, Case and Tense
Mr Auali is marking a descriptive paragraph by a Grade 10 student, Jonah. Jonah wrote:
"The market was crowded. People pushes past each other and shout prices. A woman sells bananas, and she waves a bunch of them at the customers. Everyone were sweating. My uncle and me walked to the fish section, where a man were gutting a tuna. The smell was strong. Each of the fishermen wear rubber boots."
Jonah can recite the rule that a singular subject takes a singular verb, yet he breaks it repeatedly. His errors cluster where the subject is separated from the verb by other words, or where the subject looks plural but is grammatically singular. Mr Auali also notices that the paragraph switches between past and present tense without a clear reason, and that Jonah is unsure whether to write "my uncle and me" or "my uncle and I". He wants Jonah to diagnose his own pattern rather than copy corrections.
1. Find the four subject–verb agreement errors. For each, explain what probably led Jonah to choose the wrong verb form.
Read the worked answer
- "People pushes" - people is plural, so push. Jonah has carried over the noun habit of adding -s for plurals; in the present tense, -s marks a singular verb, not a plural one.
- "Everyone were sweating" - everyone is grammatically singular despite meaning many, so was. Jonah has matched the verb to the idea of a crowd rather than to the word.
- "a man were gutting" - the subject a man is singular, so was. The plural fishermen appears later in the same sentence, and Jonah has probably let the nearest plural noun pull the verb.
- "Each of the fishermen wear" - each is the head subject and is singular, so wears. The plural noun after of attracts the verb, a classic proximity error.
The pattern is worth naming: Jonah agrees with the nearest noun or with the meaning, not with the grammatical subject.
2. Explain why "My uncle and me walked to the fish section" is wrong, and give a test Jonah can apply himself.
Read the worked answer
Walked is a finite verb and needs a subject, and subjects take the nominative case. I is nominative; me is accusative, the form used for objects ("she saw me") and after prepositions ("between you and me"). So the sentence should read "My uncle and I walked".
The self-check is deletion: remove the other person and read the sentence alone. "Me walked to the fish section" sounds immediately wrong, while "I walked to the fish section" is correct - so I is needed in the compound subject.
The same test also protects the other direction. In "The teacher spoke to my uncle and me", deleting gives "spoke to me", not "spoke to I", so me is right. Jonah needs the test rather than the rule label, because the rule alone has not transferred.
3. The paragraph mixes past and present tense. Decide which tense Jonah should use and justify your choice, then name the changes this requires.
Read the worked answer
The paragraph is framed as one remembered visit - "My uncle and I walked", "The smell was strong" - so consistent past tense is the better choice. The past anchors it as a single event with a clear position in time, which is what a descriptive recount needs.
Using present tense throughout is also defensible if Jonah wants a "you are there" effect, describing the market as it always is. Either choice works; what does not work is switching without signalling a change of time frame.
Choosing past requires: pushes/shout → pushed/shouted; sells/waves → was selling/waved; Everyone were sweating → Everyone was sweating; were gutting → was gutting; wear → wore. The teacher should ask Jonah to state his choice in one sentence before correcting, so the corrections follow a decision rather than a list.