25 Feb Subject-verb Agreement

Order Instructions
Subject-verb Agreement
In the lectures this week, you learned about the importance of subject-verb agreement. To support your learning, we have chosen several exercises for you to complete.
From your course textbook, LB Brief, complete the following exercises:
• 29.1
• 29.2
Provide your answers in a Microsoft Word Document and upload them to the Submissions
Area. Make sure to follow the directions carefully.
Exercise 29.1 Revising: Subject-verb agreement

Revise the verbs in the following sentences as needed to make subjects and verbs agree in number. If the sentence is already correct as given, mark the number preceding it.

Example:

Each of the job applicants type sixty words per minute.

Each of the job applicants types sixty words per minute.

Weinstein & Associates are a consulting firm that try to make businesspeople laugh.

Results from recent research shows that humor relieves stress.

Reduced stress in businesses in turn reduce illness and absenteeism.

In special conferences held by one consultant, each of the participants practice making others laugh.

“Isn’t there enough laughs within you to spread the wealth?” the consultant asks his students.

The consultant quotes Casey Stengel’s rule that the best way to keep your management job is to separate the underlings who hate you from the ones who have not decided how they feel.

Such self-deprecating comments in public is uncommon among business managers, the consultant says.

When a manager laughs at himself or herself, a grumpy employee becomes one of those who hides bad temper.

Reduced stress can reduce friction within an employee group, which then work together more productively.

Every one of the consultants caution, however, that humor has no place in life-affecting corporate situations such as employee layoffs.

Exercise 29.2 Adjusting for subject-verb agreement

Rewrite the following paragraphs to change the underlined words from plural to singular. (You will sometimes need to add a or the for the singular, as in the example.) Then change verbs as necessary so that they agree with their new subjects.

Example:

Siberian tigers are an endangered subspecies.

The Siberian tiger is an endangered subspecies.

Siberian tigers are the largest living cats in the world, much bigger than their relative the Bengal tiger. They grow to a length of nine to twelve feet, including their tails, and to a height of about three and a half feet. They can weigh over six hundred pounds. These carnivorous hunters live in northern China and Korea as well as in Siberia. During the long winter of this Arctic climate, the yellowish striped coats get a little lighter in order to blend with the snow-covered landscape. The coats also grow quite thick because the tigers have to withstand temperatures as low as −50°F.

Siberian tigers sometimes have to travel great distances to find food. They need about twenty pounds of food a day because of their size and the cold climate, but when they have fresh food they may eat as much as a hundred pounds at one time. They hunt mainly deer, boars, and even bears, plus smaller prey such as fish and rabbits. They pounce on their prey and grab them by the back of the neck. Animals that are not killed immediately are thrown to the ground and suffocated with a bite to the throat. Then the tigers feast.