Writing: Subject-verb agreement — Example

- [Instructor] Borderlands Food Bank, an organization in Nogales, Arizona, rescue millions of pounds of slightly imperfect imported food every year and then they underlined the verb rescue and we see all of the choices here are have rescued, are rescuing, rescues. So they're all different forms of the verb rescue. So let's just think about it. Let's first think about, well, what is doing the rescuing? So we see the thing that's doing the rescuing is Borderlands Food Bank, Borderlands Food Bank which is an organization in Nogales, Arizona. Now, is Borderlands Food Bank one thing or many things? Is it singular or is it plural? Well, we're only talking about one organization. We're only talking about one food bank and so this right over here is singular. This is singular. It's not Borderlands Food Banks. Now, if you're not careful when you see this s here, your brain might say oh, I'm dealing with something plural but it's Borderlands Food Bank, not Borderlands Food banks. So we have a singular subject here and now what about the verb? Is this the verb that we would use for a singular subject? Would you say, would you say, let's say he, would you say he rescue, he rescue or would you say he rescues? He, let me rewrite this, he rescues, he rescues food, he rescue food or would you write he rescues food? Rescues food. Well, if you have a singular subject, the singular form of the verb rescue is rescues. So since we have a singular subject here, we wanna say Borderlands Food Bank, an organization in Nogales, Arizona, rescues millions of pounds of slightly imperfect imported food every year. Rescue, this right over here, that is the plural form of the verb. So you would say they rescue, they rescue food. If you have a plural subject, if you have a plural subject then you would go with the rescue. So this is the plural form but you have a singular subject so you don't want that, you want the singular form of the verb. Singular form of the verb. You want rescues. So you want rescues right here. So we already saw why we didn't want, why we definitely wanted to change it because it was the plural form and actually all of these are also plural forms but just in different tenses. If you say have, have rescued, have, you don't say he have done something. You would say he has done something. You'd say they have done something. So this is still a plural form and once again, you wouldn't say, you wouldn't say he are rescuing. You would say they are rescuing. So this also is a plural form. So the first three choices all have the plural form even though they're different tenses, both plural form even though the subject is singular. This right over here has the appropriate verb for a singular subject.