Tenses, Concord and Common Errors

English Language · WAEC and JAMB · SS2 and SS3

Concord items appear in the objective paper every single year and the same errors bleed into the essay, where they cost expression and accuracy marks twice over. Most of these mistakes come from habits of Nigerian spoken English, not from ignorance of grammar.

What you need to know

The present simple adds s only in the third person singular: he writes, she goes, it works, but I write and they write. Dropping that s is the single most common error in WASSCE scripts.
The present continuous is for actions happening now or around now, and it is not used with verbs of state such as have, know, understand, believe, like, want and hear. 'I am having a car' should be 'I have a car'.
The present perfect, has or have plus the past participle, links a past action to the present, so it cannot take a finished time expression. 'I have eaten rice yesterday' is wrong; 'I ate rice yesterday' is right.
The past perfect, had plus the past participle, marks the EARLIER of two past events: 'By the time we arrived, the bus had left.' Using the simple past for both destroys the sequence.
A verb agrees with its true subject, not with the nearest noun. In 'The box of tools IS missing', the subject is box, singular, even though tools stands beside the verb.
With neither-nor and either-or, the verb agrees with the subject NEARER to it: 'Neither the principal nor the teachers WERE present', but 'Neither the teachers nor the principal WAS present.'
Each, every, everybody, somebody, nobody, one and none are singular and take a singular verb: 'Each of the students HAS submitted', not have submitted.
'The number of' takes a singular verb while 'a number of' takes a plural one: 'The number of candidates IS rising' but 'A number of candidates ARE absent.'
Two subjects joined by and take a plural verb, but a subject joined to another by 'as well as', 'along with', 'together with' or 'in addition to' keeps its own number: 'The principal, as well as the teachers, IS attending.'
In conditional sentences, type one uses if plus present with will, type two uses if plus past with would, and type three uses if plus past perfect with would have. 'If I would have known' is never correct; it is 'If I had known, I would have come.'
In reported speech the tense normally shifts back one step: 'He said, I will come' becomes 'He said that he WOULD come', and 'am' becomes 'was'.
Watch the Nigerianisms that examiners penalise: borrow me (lend me), off the light (switch off the light), I am coming (I will be back shortly), discuss about (discuss), reply me (reply to me), voice out (speak out), enter a bus (board a bus) and 'he is my senior brother' (my elder brother).
Irregular past participles must be learnt by heart, since the third form is what follows has, have and had: go, went, gone; write, wrote, written; take, took, taken; lie, lay, lain; drink, drank, drunk. 'I have went' and 'he has took' are heavily penalised.
Keep one tense through a stretch of writing unless the meaning requires a change. Drifting from past to present in the middle of a narrative essay loses expression marks even when every sentence is grammatical on its own.

Key terms

Tense: The form of a verb that shows the time of an action and whether it is complete, continuing or habitual.
Concord: The agreement in number and person between a subject and its verb, or between a pronoun and the noun it replaces.
Past participle: The third form of a verb, used after has, have or had and in the passive voice.
Stative verb: A verb expressing a state rather than an action, which is normally not used in the continuous form.
Reported speech: An account of what someone said, given without quotation marks and usually with the tense shifted one step back.
Proximity concord: Agreement of the verb with the subject nearer to it, used after neither-nor and either-or.

Worked examples

Rewrite correctly: 'Neither the principal nor the teachers was present at the assembly.'

Identify the construction: this is a neither-nor sentence, so the proximity rule applies.
Find the subject nearer to the verb. It is 'the teachers', which is plural.
The verb must therefore be plural: were, not was.
Rewrite the whole sentence with no other change.
Note that reversing the subjects would reverse the verb: 'Neither the teachers nor the principal WAS present.'

Answer: Neither the principal nor the teachers were present at the assembly.

Correct the following sentence and explain the error in one line: 'I have eaten rice yesterday.'

Identify the tense used: 'have eaten' is the present perfect.
Look for a time expression: yesterday names a time that is finished and cut off from now.
The present perfect cannot be used with a finished time expression, because it ties the action to the present.
Replace it with the simple past, which is the tense for a completed action at a stated past time.

Answer: 'I ate rice yesterday.' The present perfect cannot be used with a finished time marker such as yesterday.

The mistake to avoid

Candidates make the verb agree with the word standing beside it rather than with the real subject, so they write 'The list of names were posted' instead of 'was posted'. The other repeat offender is 'If I would have known', which is never correct English in any context.

In the exam

In concord items, cover the words between the subject and the verb with your finger and read what is left; the right answer becomes obvious at once. In the essay, deliberately reread your script for third-person s and for past participles after has, have and had, since those two checks alone recover several accuracy marks.