As a native English speaker, seeing something like this in the wild (from a YouTube Channel about learning English) is a bit concerning.

Only the first option, "A number of boys are playing now", makes any sense to me. As far as I can tell, the second is an incomplete sentence as best - but doesn't appear to be grammatically correct. Unless you take some outlier scenario, like, a movie called "The Number of Boys" and it is currently playing.

I have noticed that there are a lot of people teaching English who cannot speak it well enough to be teaching it.

Yikes

So, there's a number of things that come across as wrong in ways I'm not sure how to describe. I think it comes down to both "the" and "is" being marked correct. They absolutely do not mesh.

Unless “The number of boys” in the name of a band, it isn’t right.

The correct answer is, "A number of boys are playing." "A number of" acts like the adjective several. The actual number of boys is unknown, but we know it's greater than 1 because of boys being plural. You can insert any whole number greater than 1 to prove it works. For instance, three of the boys are playing, or three boys are playing.

The right number of boys for you is four, forever.

YouTube really messed up when they removed the downvote button.

AI Slop?

Wow. That is comically incorrect.

Both can be correct, situationally, as usual, but "the" probably is a bit archaic.

"A number of boys is playing now" ? if the subject is a number, it has to be singular, right ?

As someone who depended on YouTube to learn English, this is positively infuriating! I ran into so much of this shit, I can't tell you. It's literally the blind leading the blind. When I was learning about pronunciation, I was confounded by the difference in American English between \[ǝ\] and \[ʌ\], because to me they sounded identical. And yet there's video upon video on YouTube of people claiming that somehow the sound \[ǝ\] in stressed positions is pronounced \[ʌ\]. And still, after watching video after video... I heard no difference. Then I came across [this video](https://youtu.be/TvcbI7w5lVk) which actually confirmed that in American English, there *is* no difference and that \[ʌ\] occurs in British English, and provided American and British movie clips, side by side, to prove it. But until I found that channel, I was at the mercy of misinformed robots, repeating what they heard, probably in another misinformed YouTube video, and spewing it out with certainty and conviction. And as a learner, what do you do? You literally have nothing to go by.

What channel is this?

Where can I use this? Both feel untrue without any context.

A number are. ❌ A number is. ✅ Number is the subject. Boys is in the objective case, as the object of the preposition *of.* And yet, colloquially, we tend to parse it differently: “~~A number of~~ boys are,” *sounds* more right, even though it’s technically wrong. In any case, “The number of boys is playing now,” is a sentence that no one would say, though. We’d use the indefinite article, instead: “A[n unspecified] number…” “The number of boys is playing now,” doesn’t even *sound* right. Yes, this is a terrible quiz question. Both answers are arguably wrong/right for different reasons.

"A number of boys are playing now" - grammatically correct and makes sense. "A number" of something is a lot of something. So a lot of boys are playing. "The number of boys is playing now" - grammatically correct, technically, but makes no sense. Imagine a context where there is a speaker playing someone reading numbers aloud, like bingo or something. Now imagine that it is culturally known and understood that a number is associated with boys. You could call this number the number of boys, and you could say, while it is being read out loud, that the number of boys is playing now. But that's a really weird thing to say

What is the language this channels learns English in? It sounds like a language derived from Latin. It sounds like a word for word translation that would make sense in the other language but absolutely not in English

Not only does the second sentence make no meaningful sense, but the entire example is based around a rule that isn't actually practiced outside of very specific academic contexts. The rule is that the conjugation of the verb should treat a group of things as singular, even when that group contains many of those things. "The box of chicken wings is covered in sauce", rather than "The box of chicken wings are covered in sauce". It's good to be aware of. However, in common speech, fluent speakers don't observe this rule very often. This is made worse by the fact that "a number" is not a normal group. "The team of boys...", "The group of boys...", "The pack of boys..." would all be fine, but "a number" is a specific figuration used when minimal information is available. "A number of geese were seen blocking the road." "The test was given to a number of different demographics." You would almost never say "the number" unless you were actually talking about a specific quantity. "The number of licensed drivers has increased since 2020." "The number of tickets is at least 1000."

I'm native English, and at least where I'm from a 'number' could also be synonymous with 'group' (typically with singing) so it would be like 'the group of boys is playing' which is correct, although this isn't commonly used and is certainly not something I'd expect to see without alot of context behind it. And the first one is obviously correct so it is a bad question regardless.

I've never heard "a number of" used to describe a group doing something. Example being "is Sarah playing outside?" "Just a group of boys outside." "So you don't see Sarah?" "Not outside, did you check her room?" They wouldn't say "there's a number of boys playing outside" as numbers are specific and well you aren't being specific with the number so a group of boys works fine. English is a dumb language anyway, don't stress the small stuff like this.

I think are

The grading is wrong. The first option is correct whereas the second one is wrong.

Jokes on you, the number of boys is a song title.....

The correct phrase is "the number of boys is playing now" because "the number" is singular and acts as the subject of the sentence. Here's a breakdown: "The number" is singular: While "boys" is plural, the phrase "the number" refers to a single quantity, making it singular. "Is" is the correct verb: Because "the number" is singular, it requires a singular verb form, which is "is" in this case. Example: "The number of students is increasing" Example: "A number of students are going on the trip"

I agree. I bet shitty AI is involved…

That's intentional rage bait to get clicks and comments. The more engagement a video has, the more people YouTube will suggest it to.

Both are correct. This is correct, and complete: A number of boys are playing now = some boys are playing. Additional info isn't necessary. This is correct, but incomplete: The number of boys is playing now. = The number of boys could be a title or a significant, precisely defined given number of boys.

If "Number of Boys" was a song or album title, it would be correct. The answer would still be wrong because it would not have made it clear that "Number of Boys" was actually a singular thing.

Typically, “A number of…” is followed by “are”, and “The number of…” is followed by “is”. They got this correct. For example, you would say, “The number of people waiting is increasing.” However, their example definitely sounds awkward. You would say “group” instead of “number”, but if we were to stick with “number”, “are” definitely sounds more natural to me regardless of the above mentioned rule.

Ah yes, the number of boys, which is \~4.05 billion, is playing now. I didn't know numbers could play like that.

Number is the subject of the sentence, not boys Number is singular

It could be referring to number as a music term [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_(music)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_(music))

Both are correct, and both are common. But there is (or there are) a lot of people interested in grammar who are also incredibly ignorant about grammar - especially on social media. And *that* is how grammar is rather like sex.

‘Number’ is a singular subject and the noun boys is not the subject. The subject then verbs the object. But you don’t need an object, which is why the sentence seems incomplete.

The first seems to make sense "A number of boys are playing now" is another way of saying "Many boys are playing now". I'm not sure what the second could mean.

This is why I don't care for tests or AI sides and crap lke that. I don't even know in what situation you would ever use a sentence like that. I read literature and watch english content like news, podcasts, or just english YT channels. I can understand Charles Dickens and Thomas Sowell. But I have no idea what these stupid examples in a lot of these "tests" I see being posted here are supposed to mean. I had english in school tho. But a lot of these examples really puzzle me.

Neither of those is correct. The correct sentence would be "A number of boys is playing now." Combined singular and group nouns are weird. You're talking about boy*s* plural, but in terms of *a* singular group of them. It just looks odd because a plural noun feels like it should always be followed by 'are.' If someone asks how many people there are, "There's definitely a number of them." (There *is*) would be correct. A flock of birds **is** flying overhead. Some birds **are** flying overhead. It gives major cognitive dissonance, I think because 'a number' is a very vague collective noun.

Teaching a language is hard let alone a language with this much cultural variation. This is incorrect in all of them however. It wouldn’t surprise me if they aren’t native and this is a direct translation from their mother tongue. If I were to guess, they probably don’t think twice about just using auto translate even when it’s nonsensical. Which is sad because people will actually try to use this as a resource and then get scammed by it. (Depends on your definition of scam time is valuable to me so I see it as such).

Unless "The Number of Boys" is a song title, option 2 is totally wrong.

That is absolutely context-dependent, and in my humble, foreign opinion, the former sentence requires CONSIDERABLY less context to be correct. But apparently that is not a method you should employ when learning English.

It's correct, even if it's awkward - the subject is "number", not "boys". At least this is true for North American dialects. In UK English, they consider the context, so you will see things like "the team are winning a lot of games".