Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate word.
Isabel is a flight attendant. She ____________ passengers.
A) Serve
B) To serve
C) Serves
D) Serving

Answer 1

Hint: To solve this question, we need to have basic knowledge regarding the subject-verb agreement. Subject-verb agreement is the use of the correct form of a verb with the subject given in a sentence.

Complete answer:
Some subject-verb agreement rules that must be followed while framing a sentence are;
i) The noun must be singular if the topic is singular and it must be plural if the topic is plural.
ii) When there is only one subject and several verbs in a sentence, all the verbs must agree with the subject.

We shall use the above-given rules to solve our question.
Since the first sentence is in the present tense, the second sentence should be as well.
Option A - Serve - She serve passengers. This is incorrect because, ‘she’ is a singular subject and for a singular, we have to use the singular verb. We generally add an -s to the verb to change it into the singular form. Therefore, the correct sentence should be She serves passengers.
Option B - To serve - This is an unconjugated form of the verb. Once we conjugate a verb in a sentence, we no longer use the word ‘to’ before it. Therefore, this option is also incorrect.
Option C - Serves - She serves passengers. This is the correct option because it follows the subject-verb agreement by using the singular verb for the singular subject.
Option D - Serving - This is the continuous form of the verb. It is used when an action is unfinished or continuously happening. She serving passengers is therefore incorrect. While using the continuous tense, we need to use a helping verb such as is, was, are, were etc.

Thus, the correct answer is Option (C) Serves.

Note:
- In terms of number, subjects and verbs must agree (singular or plural). Whenever a subject is singular, the verb must be singular as well; if the subject is plural, the verb must be plural as well.
- Nouns and verbs form plurals in the present tense in opposite ways: nouns add a, s to the singular form, whereas verbs exclude a, s from the singular form.
- Nouns that cannot be counted always use a singular verb. For e.g. sand, courage, water, each, none etc.