Mastering Subject-Verb Agreement with Collective Nouns

This question tests your understanding of subject-verb agreement, specifically with collective nouns. A collective noun is a noun that represents a group of people or things, such as 'jury', 'team', 'family', 'committee', 'audience', etc.

Collective nouns can be treated as either singular or plural, depending on how they are acting in the sentence:

• When the group is acting as a single unit, the collective noun is treated as singular, and a singular verb is used.
• When the members of the group are acting as individuals, or when there is disagreement within the group, the collective noun is treated as plural, and a plural verb is used.

Analyzing the Sentence: "The jury ______ deciding how they want to judge."

Let's look closely at the given sentence:

"The jury ______ deciding how they want to judge."

Notice the pronoun "they" later in the sentence. "They" is a plural pronoun. This pronoun refers back to the jury members, indicating that the sentence is focusing on the individual members of the jury and their individual process of deciding ("how they want to judge").

Since the sentence treats the jury members as individuals using the plural pronoun "they", the collective noun 'jury' should be treated as plural in this context. Therefore, we need a plural verb to fill the blank.

Choosing the Correct Verb Form

The blank is followed by "deciding", which is the present participle form of the verb 'decide'. This suggests a continuous tense (present continuous or past continuous), which requires a form of the verb 'to be' before the present participle.

Let's evaluate the options:

• are: This is a plural form of the verb 'to be' in the present tense. "The jury are deciding" fits the structure and treats 'jury' as plural, aligning with the pronoun "they". The present tense "are deciding" also fits well with "they want to judge" (present tense 'want').
• will: This is a modal verb used for the future tense. It doesn't fit the structure needed for a continuous action ("will deciding" is grammatically incorrect; it would need to be "will be deciding").
• has: This is a singular form of the verb 'to have' in the present tense. It doesn't fit the structure needed for a continuous action ("has deciding" is grammatically incorrect; it would need to be "has decided" for the present perfect tense).
• was: This is a singular form of the verb 'to be' in the past tense. "The jury was deciding" treats 'jury' as singular. While it fits the structure for a past continuous tense, the use of the plural pronoun "they" strongly suggests a plural treatment of the noun, and the present tense verb "want" in the clause "how they want to judge" makes the present tense "are deciding" a more appropriate choice than "was deciding".

Based on the use of the plural pronoun "they" and the requirement for a form of 'to be' before "deciding", the plural present tense verb "are" is the correct choice.

The completed sentence is: "The jury are deciding how they want to judge."