English does not require that modifiers agree in plurality with nouns like some other languages.
In the phrase task names - task is an adjective answering the question what kind? for the noun names. The s on the end of task would only be present if it's a plural noun (or singular verb - e.g. she tasks me with taking out the trash.).
Yes, it's perfectly fine English but is heavily nuanced.
"It would seem" expresses an opinion about the current state of something:
It would seem that we are out of milk
This is roughly equivalent to "I think we are out of milk". It also frequently implies the question of whether the situation is true, to which the listener could respond something like:
Yes, it would seem so.
to mean they agree with the opinion. In addition, the expression is relatively polite since I have expressed my interpretation of the situation rather than saying it is definitively true.
Compare this:
You don't have any money.
to this:
It would seem that you don't have any money.
I might know that you have no money, but by saying "it would seem" it sounds more considerate.
Lastly, the expression reflects the famous British characteristic of understatement in the face of bad news or adversity, to make the situation seem less dangerous or perilous than it actually is.
Well, old chap, it would seem we are surrounded by hungry tigers with no hope of rescue. Might as well break out that whiskey you've been saving, eh?
"Our situation is even worse than we had feared" is also fine. It says that the current situation -- implied by the "is" -- is worse than we previously thought it would be.
You are correct and the "had" is optional, but using it does imply that, at some previous point, they did seriously consider the situation.
Ah, it would seem the situation is worse than I had previously thought. In addition to the tigers, the tree we are in is infested with venomous cobras. We may as well finish the bottle then, what?
Best Answer
We can and do say both of them in standard English.
My sense is that most or many teachers who say that would probably not think about their choice of using grade or grades, and most students who hear it would probably not notice which choice the teacher made.
This is because we can think of the grade (or grades) and the situation in three ways.
The first way is to think that every student will get a grade, so there are multiple grades (every student will get one). Since the noun names more than one grade, we can use grades for the same simple reason we say Here are some apples.
The second way is to think of the grade is as a singular thing. It is a thing that the teacher calculates in a certain way, and the teacher is explaining to all of you how she calculates it. (That singular thing.)
I will illustrate this with an example. Suppose a fire department hires 15 new firefighters. On their first day, a trainer might greet the group by saying Welcome, everybody. Let me start by telling you some things about the (or your) job.
Here, the trainer is talking about (thinking about) a single job: firefighter, even though there are 15 people who have 15 new jobs.
Finally, we can conceptualize the message as the teacher speaking to each of you individually, about your grade, and only your grade, even though she is speaking to each of you all together at the same time.