- "The majority of the class was having problems with simple subject-verb agreement problems..."
- Correction: "The majority of the class were having problems with simple subject-verb agreement problems..."
1 Answer
With a group noun (such as "team", "family" or "government"), the agreement can be either with the grammatical form of the noun or with the meaning of the noun. The form is singular "majority", the meaning is plural (there are multiple people in the majority of the class).
So both "was" or "were" could be correct. You would choose "was" if you think of "the majority of the class" as a single unit, and "were" if you consider the individuals. Since "the majority of the class" is not a fixed group of people, you would probably use "were" in this context.