4.2 Pronoun antecedent agreement

Objectives

Students will learn about pronoun-antecedent agreement. They will be able to locate the antecedent for each pronoun, and determine whether the pronoun should be neutral, gender specific, singular, or plural.

Students will learn that " he or she " should be used with indefinite singular pronouns that refer to a specific type of person (doctor, lawyer, engineer, representative) in order to avoid sexist language. Furthermore, when writing, students should consider replacing antecedents that refer to persons into the plural form to avoid overusing “ he or she ” in sentences.

Students will also learn that compound subjects using “ and ” use the plural form of pronouns. For compound subjects joined by “ neither - nor ” or “ either - or ”, the pronoun should agree with the antecedent that is closest to the subject. In the below example, the antecedents/pronouns are in bold print.

Example: The teacher and the students will attend their graduation ceremony.

Either/Neither the teacher or/nor the students will attend their graduation ceremony.

Teaching strategies:

The instructor should review personal, possessive, indefinite singular and indefinite plural pronouns, and collective nouns with the students (see tables below). Students need to learn that personal pronouns are classified as subjects or objects of a sentence depending on where they are located in a sentence. Possessive pronouns can serve as adjectives to modify nouns (used before the noun), or to indicate ownership.

The following indefinite pronouns are always singular in number:

The table below provides pronouns that may be either singular or plural pronouns:

Collective nouns are usually singular unless the meaning is plural, when its members function as individuals. Below are common collective nouns to share with the students:

The instructor should review all material prior to teaching this lesson. In the slide show, the definition of pronoun-antecedent agreement is provided. Students should learn to identify the antecedent to a pronoun, and the pronoun itself: personal, possessive, indefinite singular, or indefinite plural. In addition, students should understand that collective nouns are usually singular but may be plural depending on whether its members function as a whole or as individuals.

The PowerPoint presentation provides the above-mentioned rules for pronoun-antecedent agreement. Four interactive practice slides (# 4, # 6, # 8, and # 12) offer in-class practice activities for the instructor to review with the class. Each practice sentence is animated individually so that the instructor can ask students to select the correct answer within the options that are given. After students respond, with a mouse click, the correct answer appears. The following general rules to pronoun-antecedent agreement are emphasized in the final slides of the PowerPoint presentation (slides # 13 and #14):

1. All pronouns have antecedents, which refer to person(s) or object(s) that are previously mentioned in the text.
2. Singular antecedents use singular pronouns.
3. Plural antecedents use plural pronouns.
4. Avoid sexist language; instead, use gender-neutral&plural antecedents (persons, individuals, students, people, human beings, postal workers, coordinators).
5. The gender of a pronoun must match its antecedent: Diana waited for her husband.
6. Most indefinite pronouns are singular.
7. Generic nouns (doctor, student, writer, member, person) represent both males and females. -- A college student has his or her own point of view.
8. Change generic nouns to plural to fix agreement problems. -- College students have their own point s of view.
9. Collective nouns are usually singular unless the people in the collective group act as individuals.
10. If you’re not sure, look it up!

Materials:

In order to offer this lesson, instructors need a computer and a multi-media projector.

The following materials are provided with this module:

1. PowerPoint slide show
2. A hand-out of the slide show for students after they receive the lesson
3. Two practice sheets with pronoun-antecedent agreement exercises: Practice I-Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement ; Practice II-Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
4. Answer sheets for the two practice exercises: Answers-Practice I and Answers-Practice II

Assessment:

The authors recommend that the instructor distribute the practice sheets to the students as a pre-test prior to receiving the lesson. After completing the lesson, students should answer the practice sheets again as a post-test. In this way, instructors may determine whether the students master this objective or require additional instructional support.