Noun-Verb Agreement — English Grammar Exercises
tourist or tourists? some advice or an advice? — get it right
Noun-Verb Agreement
English subject-verb agreement is predictable for most nouns, but a well-defined set of high-frequency nouns systematically violates learner expectations. Research from the English Profile Programme identifies agreement errors with nouns like 'news', 'police', and collective nouns as a consistent B1–B2 error type, appearing across learners from many different L1 backgrounds. The difficulty is not the agreement rule itself — it is knowing which grammatical number a given noun carries, since visual form and grammatical number often diverge. 'News' ends in -s but is grammatically singular; 'police' has no -s but is grammatically plural; 'jeans' is always plural despite sometimes referring to a single item.
Nouns That Look Plural but Are Singular
- News: The news is good. Was the news interesting?
- Academic subjects: Physics is difficult. Economics was her best subject. (Also: mathematics, athletics, politics, gymnastics)
Nouns That Are Always Plural
- Police: The police are searching. The police have arrived.
- Pair nouns: These jeans are too tight. The scissors were on the desk. (Also: trousers, shorts, glasses, pyjamas, tights)
Collective Nouns
Nouns like team, family, company, government, committee are flexible in British English. Use a singular verb when the group acts as one unit; use a plural verb when the focus is on the individuals within the group.
The team are celebrating tonight. (individual players celebrating)
Common Mistakes
✗ The police is searching for the suspect. → ✓ The police are searching.
✗ A football team have eleven players. → ✓ A football team has eleven players.
✗ These scissors is very sharp. → ✓ These scissors are very sharp.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between countable and uncountable nouns in English?
Countable nouns refer to things you can count individually: one book, two chairs, three problems. They have a singular and a plural form, and you can use a/an before them. Uncountable nouns refer to substances, concepts, or masses that are not divided into separate units: water, advice, information, furniture, traffic. You cannot say 'an advice' or 'furnitures'. To quantify them, use measure expressions: a piece of advice, a litre of water, two items of furniture.
Which English nouns are uncountable that learners often treat as countable?
The most common errors involve: advice (not 'advices'), information (not 'informations'), furniture (not 'furnitures'), equipment (not 'equipments'), luggage (not 'luggages'), progress (not 'progresses'), homework (not 'homeworks'), and traffic (not 'traffics'). These nouns are countable in many other languages, which is why the error persists even at B2 level. The fix is always a measure expression: 'three pieces of advice', 'a lot of information'.
What are the irregular plural forms of English nouns?
Key irregular plurals: man → men, woman → women, child → children, tooth → teeth, foot → feet, person → people, mouse → mice, goose → geese. Some nouns do not change at all: sheep → sheep, fish → fish, deer → deer, aircraft → aircraft, series → series. Nouns ending in -f/-fe often change to -ves: shelf → shelves, knife → knives, life → lives (exceptions: roof → roofs, chief → chiefs).
Is 'news' singular or plural? What about 'police' and 'mathematics'?
'News' looks plural but is always singular: 'The news is shocking', 'Was the news good?' — never 'the news are'. 'Police' is always plural and has no singular: 'The police are searching'; for one officer say 'a police officer'. Academic disciplines ending in -s (mathematics, physics, economics, athletics, politics) are singular: 'Mathematics is my favourite subject.' Clothing/tool plurals (jeans, trousers, scissors, glasses) are always plural: 'These jeans are too tight.'