IELTS Subject-Verb Agreement: Common Errors

Short answer: Subject-verb agreement means the verb must match its subject in number - a singular subject takes a singular verb.

It costs IELTS marks because slips like "the number of students have risen" are repeated grammar errors that cap your Grammatical Range and Accuracy, a quarter of your Writing and Speaking band. The hard cases, though, are predictable.

Subject-verb agreement sounds like a beginner topic, yet it quietly holds capable candidates at Band 6.5.

The reason is that IELTS answers use long, abstract subjects - the number of applicants, a range of factors, each of the studies - where the noun nearest the verb is not the noun that governs it.

This guide covers why these errors matter for your band, the tricky subjects that catch everyone, agreement across long subjects, uncountable and collective nouns, a worked example, and a self-check routine.

Why agreement errors cost marks

Grammatical Range and Accuracy is 25% of your Writing band and 25% of your Speaking band, and the "accuracy" half is where agreement lives.

A subject-verb slip is a basic error in examiner terms - the kind the Band 7 descriptor expects you to avoid, because Band 7 asks for "frequent error-free sentences" (see the official IELTS Writing Task 2 band descriptors).

One agreement mistake will not sink an essay, but the same mistake repeated across several sentences signals shaky control and keeps you at Band 6, whose descriptor accepts "some errors" that "rarely reduce communication" rather than the "frequent error-free sentences" Band 7 requires.

For how the accuracy criterion sits alongside the other three, see how IELTS Writing is scored.

Agreement errors are also among the cheapest to fix, because they follow rules rather than intuition. You are not learning new vocabulary or attempting a risky structure; you are applying a handful of patterns consistently.

That makes them, along with articles and tense, one of the fastest routes from Band 6.5 to Band 7 - see the wider list in our grammar for Band 7 guide.

There is a second, subtler cost. Agreement errors often travel in pairs with pronoun errors, because the moment you misjudge whether a subject is singular or plural you tend to pick the wrong pronoun to refer back to it.

Fix the agreement and you usually fix the pronoun in the same stroke, which is why this one topic repays attention out of proportion to how small each individual mistake looks on the page.

Tricky subjects: each, everyone, the number of

Some subjects look plural but are grammatically singular. Indefinite pronouns such as each, every, everyone, everybody, someone, nobody and anything all take a singular verb: Everyone has a role to play, not have.

When each or every begins a subject, the verb stays singular even if two nouns follow: Each student and teacher is responsible, not are.

The classic trap is the pair the number of versus a number of.

The number of is singular - the grammatical subject is number - so The number of applicants has risen. But a number of means "several" and is plural: A number of applicants have withdrawn. The same logic governs the majority of and a proportion of, which take their number from the noun that follows.

Quantity phrases like these appear constantly in Task 1 data descriptions and Task 2 arguments, so getting them right pays off repeatedly.

Two more constructions deserve a rule. With either ... or and neither ... nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject: Neither the students nor the teacher is satisfied, but Neither the teacher nor the students are satisfied.

And one of the takes a singular verb, because the subject is one: One of the main causes is unemployment, not are. These look fiddly written out, but each is a single rule you apply once and then trust.

Fractions and percentages follow their noun as well: Half of the budget is spent (singular, because budget is uncountable) but Half of the students are absent (plural).

This matters in Task 1, where you constantly write about proportions - a third of respondents were, 25% of the sample was - and a mismatch here is one of the most frequent data-description errors.

Agreement across long subjects

The single biggest cause of agreement errors is distance: when words separate the subject from its verb, the eye latches onto the nearest noun. Ignore the words in between and find the true head of the subject.

In The list of demands is long, the subject is list (singular), not demands. In The impact of rising fees on students is significant, the subject is impact, so the verb is is, however many plural nouns crowd the middle.

Phrases beginning with of, with, along with, as well as, together with and including do not change the number of the subject. The manager, along with two assistants, is attending stays singular, because along with two assistants is an add-on, not part of the grammatical subject.

Relative clauses cause the same slip: in a policy that affects millions, the verb inside the clause agrees with that, which stands for policy (singular) - so affects, not affect.

When two subjects are genuinely joined by and, though, the verb is plural: education and healthcare are priorities.

The phrase there is / there are catches many candidates, because the real subject comes after the verb. Match the verb to that following noun: There is a clear trend (singular) but There are several factors (plural).

Under time pressure people default to there is for everything, producing there is many reasons - a very common and very visible error. Glance forward to the noun before you choose the verb.

A trickier version is the pattern one of the [plural] who/that. In She is one of the students who work part-time, the verb work is plural, because who refers back to students, not to one.

This is genuinely subtle and rarely worth agonising over in the exam, but recognising it stops you second-guessing a sentence you actually had right.

Uncountable and collective nouns

Uncountable nouns take a singular verb and never take a plural -s: information, research, advice, knowledge, equipment, evidence and news among them. Write The evidence is compelling and Research shows, never evidences or researches.

This overlaps with a vocabulary error - an advice, informations - so fixing it tidies two criteria at once. Note that data is treated as plural in formal academic writing (the data show), though singular use is now widely accepted; pick one and stay consistent.

Collective nouns - team, government, committee, company, family, public - name a group as a single unit and normally take a singular verb, especially in the American convention that IELTS also accepts: The government has announced cuts. British usage allows a plural verb when you mean the members acting individually (the committee are divided), and both are acceptable in IELTS, since UK and US conventions each count.

The rule that is not optional is consistency: do not write the government has changed their policy, mixing a singular verb with a plural pronoun - choose its to match has.

A few nouns cause trouble because they look plural but are singular, and the reverse. Subjects like economics, mathematics, physics and news end in -s yet take a singular verb: Economics is a popular subject, The news is encouraging.

Meanwhile police and people are plural without an -s: The police are investigating, People are concerned. Learning this short list by heart removes a cluster of errors that no amount of general reading will fix.

A worked example

The paragraph below was written for this article to concentrate several agreement errors in one place; it is a teaching example, not a real test answer. Try to find all four slips before reading the correction.

With errors: The number of students who studies abroad have increased. Each of these students face new challenges, and the information they receives about visas are often confusing.

Corrected: The number of students who study abroad has increased. Each of these students faces new challenges, and the information they receive about visas is often confusing.

Four fixes, each a rule from above. The number of ... has, not have, because the subject is number. Students who study, not studies, because the relative clause agrees with the plural students.

Each ... faces, singular. And information ... is, because information is uncountable - which also fixes they receive, plural to agree with they. None of these is difficult in isolation; the paragraph is hard only because the subjects and their verbs sit far apart.

It is worth noticing that a reader focused on meaning would understand the faulty version perfectly - the errors "rarely reduce communication," in the words of the Band 6 descriptor.

That is exactly why they are dangerous: they do not feel like mistakes as you write, so they survive into the final draft unless you check for them deliberately. Understanding is not the test; accuracy is.

Self-check tips

In the exam you cannot ask anyone, so build a quick internal check. When you write a verb, glance back and ask "what is the real subject?" - then strip out every phrase between them.

Reduce The impact of rising fees on students to The impact ... is and the agreement becomes obvious. Read your answer once at the end hunting only for verbs, ignoring everything else; isolating one error type is far faster than trying to catch every mistake at once.

It also helps to know your grammatical habits from your first language.

Speakers of languages that do not mark the third-person -s, for instance, tend to drop it under pressure (he go, the government say), so if that is you, make the -s your single highest-priority check.

Targeted self-knowledge beats a generic proofread: two minutes spent on the one error you actually make is worth more than ten minutes skimming for everything at once.

Keep a personal list of the subjects that trip you - most people have two or three recurring ones, often the number of and uncountable nouns - and drill those specifically.

The IELTSbiz Writing Checker flags agreement errors sentence by sentence, so you can see your own pattern, and a daily habit with the Word Coach builds the accuracy reflex on real sentences.

For the full set of errors that sit alongside agreement, our common grammar mistakes guide ties them together.

Conclusion

Subject-verb agreement errors are basic in the examiner's eyes, cheap to fix, and among the fastest ways to move from Band 6.5 to Band 7.

Learn the singular subjects that look plural (each, everyone, the number of), find the true head of long subjects by stripping the words in between, and treat uncountable nouns as singular.

Then build a habit of one final read hunting only for verbs, and this whole class of error simply stops appearing in your writing.