The Knewton Blog


World Cup Grammar

Posted on June 9, 2010 by

1

The Brits celebrate anachronistic subject-pronoun agreement.


David Ingber is the Faculty Manager at Knewton

If you watch the World Cup over the next few weeks, you are bound to hear the commentators utter sentences like this: “England, which have not brought the World Cup trophy back to their homeland in over 50 years, face a difficult road ahead of them.”

For whatever reason, such a sentence is perfectly acceptable in the soccer world. However, such sentences are terrible on the SAT and GMAT. If you want to succeed on either test, you must tune out such egregious grammatical errors! “England” is a singular noun. Therefore, the sentence should read like this: “England, which has not brought the World Cup trophy back to its homeland in over 50 years, faces a difficult road ahead of it.”

Just as the players will angrily disagree with every yellow card they are given, so the commentators’ subjects, verbs, pronouns, and antecedents will wantonly disagree. We only hope that you will watch the games on mute.

Please celebrate in a responsible, grammatically sound manner. Go USA!!!

Posted in SAT, Writing Section Guide | One comment



  • http://twitter.com/BarbraSundquist BarbraSundquist

    Thank you. That grammatical error drives me crazy. However, the incorrect grammar was used so often by sports commentators during the FIFA World Cup that I actually started wondering if they knew something I didn't.