ESL Study Guide

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Sentence Structure Tip

The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were the first vehicles of humankind to venture beyond the limits of ours solar system.

Looking at the sentence you should first consider the subject and verb. The sentence is talking about the Pioneer spacecrafts, a plural subject. The verb venture agrees with the subject, so there is no subject verb agreement problems with the sentence. Now, look at the rest of the sentence. What do you notice? Looking at solar system, it is talking about a singular object. What about what comes before it? If you noticed this, you found the mistake in the sentence. Instead of ours, it should say our (forcing it to agree with a singular object).

Always remember to keep in mind whether something is singular or plural. Mistakes like these are common for those learning English, this will affect not only verb conjugation but also pronouns.



Good luck with your studies,

ESL Study Guide

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