Check Your Understanding of Active and Passive Voice and Subject-Verb Agreement

JazaJanuary 24, 2023

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Check Your Understanding of Active and Passive Voice and Subject-Verb Agreement

You can master a language only when you ace the grammar of the language. The best way to make yourselves thorough with the usage of English grammatical components is to practise grammar worksheets every once in a while. Today, let us focus on two main topics. Go through the article and complete the exercises.

A sentence normally consists of a subject and a predicate. A subject is a noun or pronoun that does the action in the sentence, and the predicate is the rest of the sentence, which signifies the action being done and, at times, the result of that action as well. For example: In the sentence, ‘Teena was talking to me’, ‘Teena’ is the subject and ‘was talking to me’ is the predicate. Remember that the predicate usually starts with a verb and sometimes an adverb. Furthermore, a sentence can have more than one subject and one predicate. Now, what is the subject-verb agreement? It is the conjugation of the main verb in the sentence in accordance with the noun(s)/pronoun(s) that acts as the subject in the sentence. Let us work out an exercise to test your knowledge of the subject-verb agreement.

Exercise 1 – Use of Subject-Verb Agreement

Fill in the blanks in the following sentences with the correct form of the verbs given in brackets.

Danny, Nadu and I _________ dinner at the Lono Tropical Lounge last weekend. (have/had)
They _________ to have the wedding in May. (planned/have planned)
_________ this the book you were looking for? (aren’t/isn’t)
They _________ from London. (are/is)
The students _________ to submit their projects by next Wednesday. (were asked/was asked)
A long talk with my friend _________ the only therapy I needed to feel better. (were/was)
Everyone in the team _________ to come to the office from Monday. (has been asked/have been asked)
Don’t you think travelling 1500 km on a motorbike _________ a little too much? (is/are)
Neither Jibin nor Ashish _________ here. (are/is)
Reena, Oviya, Ramkumar and Karthik _________ with us. (is coming/are coming)

Answers for Exercise 1

Danny, Nadu and I had dinner at the Lono Tropical Lounge last weekend.
They have planned to have the wedding in May.
Isn’t this the book you were looking for?
They are from London.
The students were asked to submit their projects by next Wednesday.
A long talk with my friend was the only therapy I needed to feel better.
Everyone in the team has been asked to come to the office from Monday.
Don’t you think travelling 1500 km on a motorbike is a little too much?
Neither Jibin nor Ashish is here.
Reena, Oviya, Ramkumar and Karthik are coming with us.

Let us look at one more topic today. Just like sentences have tenses, they have different voices too. The voice of a sentence is determined by the verb in the sentence. There are two voices in the English language – active voice and passive voice. The active voice is one in which the sentence begins with the subject that does the action. On the other hand, a sentence in the passive voice starts with the receiver of the action. While both are important, the active voice is preferred in most cases. Now, try working out the following exercise to find out how well you understand the use of active and passive voice.

Exercise 2 – Identify the Voice

Identify if the following sentences are in the active voice or passive voice.

I love icecreams.
They had bread and butter for breakfast.
Salami is not liked by many people.
Juan and Rayner were invited to the party by Susan’s mom.
The building was built by ancient Egyptians in 252 BC.
Naveen and Gowtham are going on a trip to Bali.
I was helped by Varsha.
We had dinner at the new restaurant in town.
Harry and Ron were congratulated by the Principal for their valuable contribution.
High tea was served after the event.

Answers for Exercise 2