Gustar conjugation in questions

[baesp]

Hi,

New learner here. I’m confused by Duolingo using both of these phrases:

“¿Qué tipo de películas te gusta?”
“¿Qué tipo de libros te gustan?”

I understand that gustar has to be conjugated to match the subject in the sentence, where the subject isn’t the same noun as in the typical English translation, but these examples seem to disagree to me. Shouldn’t the subject be singular “tipo” in both cases, or plural “películas”/“libros” in both cases?

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

You're right. It should be "te gusta" in both cases, to be grammatically correct. However, in daily speech, people commonly use "te gustan" because they focus on the things that are liked, rather than on "tipo de".

[aleCcowaN]

I quite agree with Angélica. You detected a formal error. But, maybe on the risk of going beyond the language level that contains those examples, I'll tell you that native speakers may use singular to hint that a single answer will suffice, and plural to invite you to utter multiple answers, or at least show you they consider yourself a potentially educated person with a rich taste and not insult you suggesting that you're some unidimentional dude who may reply racy novels and that's it.

But all this is problably pretty advanced Spanish and you may better ignore it.

[baesp]

Thank you both, that’s reassuring and insightful.