Question #f66db

1 Answer
May 18, 2017

The second sentence is grammatically correct because it has subject-verb agreement.

Explanation:

Every sentence in English needs a subject and a verb. The simplest example is from the Bible: "Jesus wept." In that sentence, Jesus is the subject--the topic that the sentence is about. "Wept" is the verb--the word that shows action or a state of being. In English, verbs change in spelling and structure depending on whether the subject the verbs refer to is singular or plural. A singular subject example is "woman" and a plural subject is "women". In a sentence, the singular subject would need a singular verb: "A woman weeps." A plural subject would need a plural verb: "The women weep."

Did you notice the difference in the two verbs? One was "weeps" and the other was "weep."

In the sentence you asked about, there is a phrase beginning with "one" , indicating that the subject is singular. So the verb needs to be singular: "works".

We check on verb forms by reciting the verb "declension ". You may not have heard of this term. Here is a declension of "work":

I work
You work
He, she, it works
We work
You (plural) work
They work

Don't let an intervening phrase confuse you. When the subject is "he", then the verb must have an "s" on it like "works", weeps, buys, goes, studies, wins.

I hope this explanation helps you.