Grammar in EAP

Exercise: Agreement

It is often difficult to use the correct verb form with long nominal groups as subject. Rewrite these, putting the verb in its correct form.

Example: The transformation of an ancient city into a new Christian city [BE] best documented at Rome.

Answer: The transformation of an ancient city into a new Christian city is best documented at Rome..

  1. Reginald Bassett's 1931: Political Crisis, published in 1958, [BE] the first attempt to look at the events of 1931 free from contemporary preconceptions.
  2. An early form of analogue computer, the astrolabe, [BE] primarily designed to solve problems of spherical trigonometry to shorten astronomical calculations.
  3. Nowadays the urinary symptoms [SEEM] to be of a lesser order.
  4. In addition to corporations aggregate, English law [ATTRIBUTE] a continuous legal personality under the name of "corporations sole" to the Queen, and to the successive holders of certain offices, especially the holders of ecclesiastical offices, such as bishops, and rectors and vicars of parishes.
  5. This view of kinship as an opposite to capitalist relations of production [EXPLAIN] the vivid interest with which Marx and Engels examined the work of such anthropologists as Bachofen, McLennan, and Maine, who were all concerned with this topic.
  6. The form of folktale combined with allegory [BE] well-adapted to an audience familiar with biblical texts and the parables derived from it.
  7. Whatever the ultimate nature of the signal [TURN] out to be, there is another question to be asked.
  8. All the cells in the progress zone at the tip [BE] multiplying and, therefore, cells are continually leaving the progress zone as the bud grows out and there is a trail of cells left behind.
  9. Not only are the results of such "on site" studies of immense value for what we assume they tell us about the role of our body clock in affecting mental performance, but they also [SERVE] two further roles.
  10. Certainly, those experiments in which the occurrence of an overt component of the OR has been monitored [HAVE] demonstrated that the response that has been habituated during pre-exposure tends to reappear when the CS- US pairings are begun.

Press this button to check your answers: