A native Spanish speaker brought a problem to me, and we were delighted to discover the answer. In Spanish, verbs that are plural tend to end in "s" whereas in English "s" comes at the end of many singular verbs. When asked to identify whether a subject like "dogs" took a singular or plural verb, the young man would correctly reply, "Plural, of course!" Then he would select the incorrect singular form of the verb like "runs" because in Spanish the "s" would make the verb plural. To help him get used to the difference between the two languages' verb patterns, we made a list of common English verbs that take "s" in the singular form. Here are some examples as singular/plural:
runs/run: The dog runs down the street. The dogs run down the street.
does/do: The dog does need a bath. The dogs do need baths.
is/are: The dog is large. The dogs are large.
has/have: The dog has fleas. The dogs have fleas.
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