GMAT Ninja SC Ep 9: Subject-Verb Agreement

If you spot a subject-verb issue in a sentence, it's usually simple to deal with. However, the Executive Assessment will make it difficult to spot these issues. They could use a compound subject or an inverted sentence, or they could just make the sentence really, really long.

In this video, Harry -- a GMAT Ninja tutor -- will show you how to spot these issues and what to do once you've seen them in order to answer these questions quickly and efficiently.

This is video #9 in our full-coverage series of Executive Assessment Sentence Correction lessons. For updates on upcoming videos, please subscribe!

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Basic Example 1 - A tray of strawberries...
03:43 Basic Example 2 - Out of America's fascination...
06:48 Question 1 - Thomas Easkins' powerful style...
13:20 Question 2 - While most of the earliest known...

[AryanYadav-fevy]

In my brain, everyone teaching here is someone from The Office, Idk how and idk why. I love this channel and the videos. TYSM!

[jackalove]

your explanation on the last question is exceptional, thanks so much !

[Gauravmsr]

Damn this is so hard, glad we have gmat ninja to help.

[huanliu]

I feel in the last question, the elimination of (D) is a little too quick. The subject could be construed as [the finding of (waterlogged latex balls at El Manati and the painting of representations of ballplayers on ceramics found at San Lorenzo)]. So on the SVA issue on D alone can not eliminate the option. The elimination comes from a further logical consideration: [the finding] used in this way as a singular noun refers to the action of finding, rather than to the things that were found, in the sense of which we should use the plural [findings]. But logically, the action of finding can not attest to something happened in the mind-thirteen centuries. It would make more sense if it says the finding attests to the modern technological advancement or something.

[vivianmac]

As always, thanks so much for creating these videos!
I had one question about the last example...
For Option D, is it possible to have interpreted the sentence as "[...] the finding of [waterlogged latex balls... and the painting]", thereby dictating the noun as the FINDING of two things. This would make the subject singular, which means that "attests" works grammatically under the context of subject-verb agreement (ignoring other grammatical cues for now).

[AllThingsAudio]

Great teacher! Really enjoyed this video

[aliyusuf]

Hey, thanks for the great videos, I have a question about Question 1 (first official example)

For option E (ignoring the more obvious issue) I was wondering if the phrase "in his own time" sufficiently changes the meaning from the original sentence "to his own time", because in E, the sentence creates an ambiguity as to what exactly is being disturbed, whereas the original sentence clearly indicates it was his time being disturbed?

[yatibansal]

In question 1, (E) provides better parallelism : as disturbing....as compelling but I understand how the use of past perfect makes it incorrect. But how do we decide which rule to prioritized, I ended up going for E instead of B due to the same reasons.

[ashishsinha]

Thanks GMAT Ninja! Thanks Harry ! I got 2 correct, 1 incorrect.

[echohao]

Hi, thanks so much for your video! However, I still have a question regarding the second last question. From the previous video about parallelism triggers, I learnt that after these triggers, the same functioning words should follow. In this example, however, after 'as', 'distrubing' appears at first as a modifier, then 'it' appears as a noun. I am a bit confused by this part. I would really appreciate it if you can answer my question. Thanks!

[rahuldhakne]

in the example question mentioned first, shouldn''t there be a comma before 'a market'?

[rejoicingGrace]

For the last question, I know that options (D) and (E) can be eliminated because of the subject verb agreement issues, but I wonder if there were no such an issue, would the phrasing "the finding of two things" act as the better subject of the action "attest to a fact that..." than the phrasing "the two things"? Just being curious. Thank you!

[manasjain]

for the 1st question: option B has "as they are" in the end. If we apply the concept of parallelism, the stem should break after "choices of subject", and thus the two parallel branches should be- "was as disturbing to his own time" and "as it is compelling for ours". So in B, the second branch would be ambiguous since it would make the sentence go like "Thomas Eakins powerful style and his choices of subject *they* are compelling for ours". Here they is extra, so shouldn't option E be preferred here since it eliminates *they*?

[Starts_with_a_dream]

In the example 1, A tray of strawberries,
Does which refer to the strawberries or incorrectly refers to the tray?

Thank you for the guidance.

[arunimagiri]

I think in example 2, the subject is not really 'a market' but 'fascination'. The fascination has grown a market (market being the object)

[avirupmukherjee]

I have a doubt in the last question, can anyone help me?

What if option E read as "the finding of waterlogged latex balls at El Manati and of representations of ballplayers painted on ceramics at San Lorenzo attests"? Would our answer choice change from A to E?

IMO: It should not because there is still nothing wrong with A which demands a correction and active form is simpler than passive a form.

[simranuppal]

In the last question, why isn't the subject for the verb be 'the fact' or 'ballgame' that are coming in the second part of the sentence. When we ask, attest to what. It attests to a fact or the ballgame

[em]

Why is in the first question Amerca's fascination not the subject to which the verb relates? Thank you!

[marccepeci]

"Furniture and fixtures that are bringing" Doesn't that refer to the noun immediately before it (furniture and fixtures) so shouldn't the verb be are.
(the subject verb of a that clause aren't the subject-verb of the main sentence)

[knightrider]

In the last question, isnt the parallelsim in A incorrect? Waterlogged latex balls, here waterlogged is a modifier describing tbe latex balls and on the other hand you have representations of ballplayers which is a noun? Shouldnt we eliminate A on the basis of that?