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ACT English 1.6 Passage Drill 264 Views


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Description:

ACT English: Passage Drill 1, Problem 6. Subject-verb agreement with some commas thrown in to the mix.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by 'fibrous husk.'

00:07

A term which...has kind of ruined our appetite for coconut.

00:24

How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

00:28

coconut, and all drupes, have

00:31

And here are the potential answers:

00:37

The first thing to think about here is subject-verb agreement.

00:40

Believe us, when the subject and verb don't agree, the rest of the sentence suffers.

00:43

And then nobody's happy.

00:45

Here's the basic principle: when a subject is singular, the verb should be singular,

00:49

and when the subject is plural, the verb should be plural.

00:53

For example, we wouldn't say, "The monkey throw the coconut at the tourists," because

00:57

in this case "monkey" is singular and "throw" is plural.

01:01

Instead, we'd make the subject and verb match by rendering them both singular: "The

01:05

monkey throws the coconut at the tourists."

01:06

Or, we could also make them both plural: "The monkeys throw coconuts at the tourists."

01:11

Simple, right? Sure, but this question has another trick up its sleeve...

01:14

We also notice that "and all drupes" is separated by commas, signaling that it's

01:19

non-essential information to the rest of the sentence.

01:21

As such, we can ignore it when considering important questions like subject-verb agreement.

01:26

The subject of this sentence is the singular word "coconut," not the plural word "drupes."

01:31

Therefore, we know we need a singular verb to match.

01:35

Since choices (A), (C), and (D) all use the plural verb "have," we can knock them

01:39

out at the same time.

01:40

This leaves us with choice (B), the correct answer.

01:42

Yeah, it sounds weird because the plural noun "drupes" appears right before the singular verb "has."

01:47

However, the real subject of "has" is "coconut," which is singular. So... "has" is indeed the

01:52

correct verb here.

01:54

We think we'll celebrate by putting the lime in the coconut...

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