a simple grammar question

"his mastery" is the subject...so its makes..is it right?

sub - mastery + grace

whats the right verb..make or makes

reason

since the subject is plural its obvious that verb shld be plural...MAKE

NO

as per answer key ...the answer was "makes"

thats why i ask for clarification

Hello,
I gues use of AND implies that subject is plural. Hence, beyond doubts, it is MAKE.

I think the subject is "mastery". Read it as:
his mastery (of something ...) make him a sought after dinner guest.
Hence I feel "makes" is the right choice.

The subject of the sentence is mastery. 'Languages' and 'social graces' are both objects of a prepositional phrase, and can't be the subject. The rules of subject verb agreement say that the subj must match the verb in number (singular/plural). Our subject is mastery, singular, and the agreeing plural verb tense is makes.

Mastery + makes = agreement.

Don't let those other words fool you, "trim the fat"! Try reading the sentence without the other phrasing (which is actually unnecessary to analyze the sentence). It helps to isolate the simple subject and then produce the simple verb to match.

Danielle wrote: Don't let those other words fool you, "trim the fat"! Try reading the sentence without the other phrasing (which is actually unnecessary to analyze the sentence). It helps to isolate the simple subject and then produce the simple verb to match.

"trim the fat" (hmm interesting )I call it "cut the crap"

It should be read like: his mastery ... makes him......

his mastery of several languages and the social graces make him a sought after dinner guest
----------------
....mostly anything with "of....." is a middleman. If you try to remove the middle man ...."of several languages and the social graces"....then you are left with: his mastery (make or makes) him a sought after dinner guest .....clearly "makes" is the correct verb here.

crap...was carried away with conjunction AND.....and thot mastery and social graces as the subject...but how do identify which part IS THE FAT to be trimmed???

The "fat" is anything between the simple subject and simple verb when you are trying to determine agreement between the two. It's usually a prepositional phrase, dependent clause, or may even be a list. But it's all functioning as a bunch of junk obscuring your view of the subj and verb together.

Ex:

Wendy, hungry, tired, cold, and lonely, and Samantha, although ugly and smelly, was forced to share a sleeping bag.

You should look at the above sentence and trim like so:

Wendy + Samantha = were forced, therefore the example sentence is wrong.

Hope that helped.

absolutely!