Marmara Elt Resources

English/English in use/Subject-verb agreement
English features a loose conjugation and declension pattern. For this reason, subject-verb agreement is of paramount importance.

Subject-Verb agreement is a rule which states that the number present in a noun must agree with the number shown in the conjugated form of the verb that is being used, and that the person of the noun must agree with the person of the conjugated form of the verb that you are using.

Proper Subject-Verb agreement:

* TO BE: I am - you are - he is - we are - you are - they are

* TO WORK: I work - you work - he works - we work - you work - they work

Where the subject is a pronoun or complex or modified as part of an adjectival phrase, or modified by parenthetic expressions, or clarified in meaning by common knowledge or something that occurs later in the sentence, then subject-verb agreement can become a little more complicated. Some grammar rules say that the complex part of the subject closest to verb in the sentence should determine the verbal agreement. However, many examples can be found that make this sound funny. A better rule is to consider the entire complex subject phrase as one subject, and then think about what kind of thing it represents.
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Read the following description

I am from Seattle, Washington. Seattle is a city in the United States. It is near the border of Canada in the northwest corner of the USA. I live in a town called Olympia which is on the Puget Sound. I live in a house in a street in the countryside. The street is called “Bear Street” and the house is old - more than 100 years old! I am an English teacher at a school in the center of the town. I like books and taking photographs. I usually have lunch at school. I usually go home by car. We have all kinds of food in Olympia. I like Italian food very much. Sometimes, I go to an Italian restaurant in Seattle. The restaurant is called “Luigi’s”. Italian food is great!

Here are the rules for when to use “A, An or The”:

• a = indefinite article (not a specific object, one of a number of the same objects) with consonants
  She has a dog.
  I work in a factory.
• an = indefinite article (not a specific object, one of a number of the same objects) with vowels (a,e,i,o,u)
  Can I have an apple?
  She is an English teacher.
• the = definite article (a specific object that both the person speaking and the listener know)
  The car over there is fast.
  The teacher is very good, isn’t he?
• The first time you speak of something use “a or an”, the next time you repeat that object use “the”.
  I live in a house. The house is quite old and has four bedrooms.
  I ate in a Chinese restaurant. The restaurant was very good.
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Teaching in today’s EFL corporate classroom requires a “Cool Corporate English Consciousness”. Because of the great emergence of multinational companies and globalization there has been a surging demand for corporate English training all around the world (English has long ago been established as the standard language for international business). Many students attend classes out of professional necessity; they require more than just textbook work to satisfy their communicative needs. Many times textbooks have strong limitations in choosing motivating material because they have to “guess” what a student will be motivated in based on current streams of popular culture. For example, if a student has a pending business presentation (in English) in a few days, which of the following topics do you think will be more motivating for him/her?
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In English as a foreign or second language teaching (EFL, ESL), if you ever need to come up with an authentic English text of any kind, i.e., newspaper, magazine, movie clip, etc. that you need to present to the class and you’ve been powerfully influenced by music your whole life you might chose to take the song approach. You’ll be okay using a popular song as authentic language text - which it certainly is. I’d go with popular songs, like “Imagine” by John Lennon, which have more appeal. You can get some additional mileage out of the song using cultural aspects as well as some others. Profiling, doing a biography of and discussing John Lennon as an example in this case.
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