主谓一致教案

新疆医科大学教案首页编号：_____No.2____

English Grammar Course

Lecture 2

Subject-verb concord

Part 1 General plan

1 st period

Step 1:Revision of last lesson (10 minutes)

Step 2:Words related to subject-verb concord (5 minutes)

Step 3: General introduction of subject-verb concord. (10 minutes)

Step 4: Detailed study of subject-verb concord--Problems of concord with nouns ending in –s (25 minutes)

2 nd period

Step 1: Detailed study of subject-verb concord--Problems of concord with collective nouns as subject (48 minutes) Step 2: Homework (2 minutes)

Part 2 Detailed plan

Objectives:

Students will be able to:

e the basic grammatical terms to explain subject-verb concord

2.understand the basic rules of subject-verb concord ( three principles and 5 basic rules)

3.solve problems related to the lecture

1st period

Step 1 Revision of Lecture 1 (10 minutes)

Step 2 Study of grammatical terms (5 minutes)

Before we learn this part, I want to know how many grammatical terms related to this lecture you have known.

Ok, look at the following words and try to remember them:

1)一致concord/agreement 2)成分element

3) 人称person 4) 数number

5) 语法一致grammatical concord 6) 意义一致notional concord

7)就近原则the principle of proximity 8)单数singular number

9) 复数plural number 10)中心词headword

11)可数名词countable noun 12)不可数名词uncountable noun

13) 单位词unit noun 14)集体名词collective noun

15)个体名词individual noun

Step 3: General introduction of subject-verb concord ( 10 minutes)

Question: Can you explain what subject-verb concord means in English?

Answer: Subject-verb concord means the agreement between subject and verb in number.

And there are 3 principles guiding subject-verb concord.

They are

●Their earning (comes, come) to 500 dollars a week.

●Neither of the young men who had applied for a position in the university(was, were) accepted.

●Two weeks( are, is) quite a short time for us to finish the work.

●The audience (is, are) listening to a Beethoven symphony.

●Neither Tom nor Mary( is, are) coming to the party, but one of them has to stay home.

●No one except his own supporters(agree, agrees).

Grammatical concord refers to the rule that the verb must match its subject in number.

----if the subject is singular or is a mass noun, the verb should take the singular form.

to the rule that the verb can sometimes agree with the subject according to the

notion of number rather than to the actual presence of the grammatical marker for that notion.

Note that grammatical concord is the basic principle, but when the subject is realized by a collective noun, a coordinate form or an expression of quantity, the other two principles will have to be considered.

Step 4: in this part, we will explain it in details from 5 aspects that often arise difficulties. (35 minutes)

1.Problems of concord with nouns ending in –s

The plural form of a noun is often formed by adding-s/es.

Question: Are all the words end in –s/es countable?

Answer: N-s -----treated as singular

----treated as plural

---treated either as singular or a plural

All these 3 cases can be dealt with under the following aspects

●Darts ___ a free and easy game. (is, are)

●Three darts ____ thrown at each true.( is, are)

●Economics___ a required course for all the students. (is, are)

●The economics of the project _ still being considered.(is, are)

●The United States __ a country of people with varied origins.(is, are)

●In early January 1976 the Netherlands __ hit by its worst storm since 1953.(was, were)

●The West Indies, apart from the Bahamas, __ commonly divided into two parts. (is, are)

●The Himalayas __ a magnificent variety of plant and animal life. (has, have)

Conclusion:

1.1: Disease and game names ending in –s

Disease:

Such as: arthritis(关节炎),bronchitis(支气管炎)mumps(腮腺严diabetes(糖尿病)…etc.

They are mostly treated as singular, but there are a few words like: measles, rickets which can be used either as singular or plural.

Game:

Such as: darts, marbles

Game names ending in –s are generally used as singular with the exception of cards which is usually treated as plural.

1.2: Subject names ending in –ics

These words such as: physics, mathematics, mechanics, politics, statistics, economics, linguistics, athletics, optics, acoustics are usually treated as singular. But when they are used in other senses than subject name, it will be different.

1.3: Geographical names ending in –s

From the examples, we can see that the name of the country will be treated as singular, but the names of archipelagos, mountain ranges, straits and falls are generally used as plural.

1.4: Other nouns ending in –s

1.4.1:For example:

●The chopsticks __ used by Chinese and Japanese for lifting food.(is, are)

●One pair of chopsticks __ enough.(isn’t, aren’t )

●Two pairs of pliers__ missing from my tool box.(is, are)

Now we can see clearly that names for things made of two parts are usually used as plural. But when they