Question

Instructions: In each of these questions, each sentence has four words or phrases in braces marked A, B, C and D. Choose one word or phrase that must be changed for the sentence to be correct.

Drug abuse {have} (A) become {one of} (B) our {most} (C) serious social {problems}. (D)

• A. A
• B. B
• C. C
• D. D

Hint:

Check subject-verb agreement first, drug abuse is singular.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

A different way to approach this is to first identify the sentence's core subject and verb, then check every other phrase only if the core checks out.

1. Strip the sentence to its skeleton: "Drug abuse have become... problems." The bare subject-verb pair is "drug abuse have," and testing it in isolation immediately sounds wrong, you would say "drug abuse has," never "drug abuse have," just as you would say "the news has broken," not "the news have broken," because both are treated as singular in English.
2. Since the core subject-verb pair already fails, part A is confirmed as the error without needing to examine B, C or D in detail.
3. As a confirmation step, substitute "has" for "have" and read the full sentence: "Drug abuse has become one of our most serious social problems." This reads naturally and needs no further correction, confirming that B, C and D were never the issue.

This method, isolating subject and verb before scanning the rest of the sentence, points to option A as the answer, matching the direct error-spotting method.

Let's summarize:

• Test the subject-verb pair on its own first, many sentence-correction traps hinge on this single relationship.
• Only look for errors in the descriptive phrases once the core grammar has been verified as sound.

This shortcut saves time when four options are given and only one usually touches the verb.