Prepositional Phrases, Take 2

Okay, we're going to work with prepositional phrases again this week, as the majority of you did not demonstrate an ability to master the concept.

Most of you got the idea of the subject-verb agreement, which means that your verb tense depends on what the subject of the sentence is. BUT, that's not all of what the assignment asked you to do.

What I want you to get from this is that when we write, we sometimes stick prepositional phrases between the subject and the verb of the sentence. When this happens, it's very easy to have the wrong verb tense because we match the verb to the last word of the prepositional phrase, not the subject of the sentence. Take a look at this:

The birds on the tree branch sings all morning long.

The subject is the birds, so the verb should be sing, as in "The birds sing..." But it's easy to make the mistake of matching the verb to the last word in the prepositional phrase (in this case it's branch) because the words are right next to each other.

Corrected, this sentence should read:

The birds on the tree branch sing all morning long.

Also, please make sure that phrase that separates your subject and verb is a prepositional phrase. To make sure, you'll want the phrase to begin with a preposition:

about
above
across
after
against
along
among
around
at
before
behind
below
beneath
beside
between
beyond
but
by
despite
down
during
except
for
from
in
inside
into
like
near
of
off
on
onto
out
outside
over
past
since
through
throughout
till
to
toward
under
underneath
until
up
upon
with
within
without

Your assignment: You will create six sets of sentences. Each set will feature a sentence with a prepositional phrase and a mismatched subject-verb, along with a sentence with a prepositoinal phrase and a proper subject-verb agreement.