[Video] Q8: No change or are contributing or contributes or have contributed

Explanation for Question 8 From the Writing Section on the Official Sat Practice Test 8

So in question eight, we're looking at this sentence here, where it says as 2 a result, organic material that is sent to landfills contribute to the release 3 of methane. And so as it's written, 4 it probably sounds pretty good to you, right? Because we see landfills contribute. 5 And this makes sense, right? Because landfills is plural and contribute as the plural 6 form of the verb. But we always need to ask ourselves in these types 7 of questions, what is doing the contributing? 8 Cause they, they take a really simple concept for the sat and they try 9 to make it difficult on you. So it's easy to look over the actual 10 subject of the sentence here. And so what's actually contributing is 11 going to be the land, the organic materials and landfills, 12 right? It's the organic materials that 13 contribute to methane a very powerful greenhouse gas, 14 right? So it's the organic materials that are doing this. 15 It's not the landfills and organic materials is a plural verb 16 here. And so if we're thinking about plural verbs, 17 right? Organic, or actually it's just organic material, 18 right? So it's actually a singular verb, 19 singular verb. And so organic material is a singular verb. 20 Or now we need to use a singular version of the verb and that's 21 going to be contributes. Right? If we can think about a saying it contribute, 22 that's the singular version or they contribute, 23 that's the plural version. It says organic material is a singular. 24 Now we're going to want to use the singular verb, 25 which is contributes with an S.