Agreement & negation · CEFR B2 · Confident
The team is / are — English subject verb agreement
A group word takes a singular verb when you mean the group as one unit, and a plural one when you mean the members. Police is always plural.
The shape
team / family / government / staff + singular or plural
Handle words that are one thing and many people.
In Hindi
समूहवाची शब्द एक इकाई हो तो एकवचन, सदस्य हों तो बहुवचन। police हमेशा बहुवचन।
CoCap explains every structure in both languages, because a rule you understand in Hindi is a rule you can use in English.
The mistake to fix first
The sentence Indian-English speakers actually produce, and the reason it is wrong.
| Commonly said | Correct English |
|---|---|
The police is looking for him. | The police are looking for him. "Police" has no singular form and always takes a plural verb. |
Learn these first
These come first. The rest of this makes more sense once they are automatic.
Questions people ask
- What is the the team is / are used for?
- A group word takes a singular verb when you mean the group as one unit, and a plural one when you mean the members. Police is always plural. In practice: handle words that are one thing and many people.
- How do you form the the team is / are?
- team / family / government / staff + singular or plural.
- What is the most common mistake with the the team is / are?
- Saying “The police is looking for him.” instead of “The police are looking for him.”. "Police" has no singular form and always takes a plural verb.
Where the team is / are fits
Where this structure sits in the ladder, and what surrounds it.
The team is / are is a CEFR B2 structure — the confident band — and it belongs to agreement & negation. CoCap’s syllabus files every structure this way so you can learn in order instead of jumping between whatever a search happened to return.
Reading it is not the same as saying it.
CoCap turns this page into practice: Hindi sentence in, English sentence out, corrected one thing at a time. Free, no card.
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