My English Pages

This activity will help students be able to identify the verb and the subject of any sentence and discover how the verb must agree with the subject in number regardless of the word (s) or phrases between them.

The lesson

1. Write the following sentences on the board.
   • Nancy plays basketball every Sunday.
   • The children don’t like this food.
   • Sara meets her boyfriend regularly
2. Students underline the subject and the verb in each sentence.
3. Students should discover subjects and verb agreement in English.
4. To check understanding of the rules, assign the following task.
   a. The coffee on the table (is, are) too hot.
   b. Alan (write, writes) good poemsl.
   c. These cars (cost, costs) a lot of money.
   d. The teacher (isn’t, aren’t) happy today.
   e. That girl(don’t, doesn’t) seem to be happy.
   f. My new friend (hasn’t, haven’t)  got a bike.
   g. Those houses (are, is) very old.
   h. The girls over there  (is, are) very nice.
   i. John (study, studies) Chinese on  Mondays.
   j. I (hop, hopes) to have a lot of friends.
5. Students exchange sheets to correct and score their sentences.

The sentences should be chosen according to the level of the students. Notice that the above examples are all in the simple present.