What’ s the question
- 1. WHAT’ S THEWHAT’ S THE QUESTION?QUESTION? How to form questions in EnglishHow to form questions in English
- 2. TYPES OF QUESTIONSTYPES OF QUESTIONS There are different types of questions inThere are different types of questions in English:English: Yes/ No Questions E.g: Do you like sports?E.g: Do you like sports? WH- Questions E.g: Who do you live with?E.g: Who do you live with? Indirect Questions E.g: Could you tell me where the station is, please? Question tags E.g: Your name is Peter, isn’t it?
- 3. Yes / No QuestionsYes / No Questions Yes or no questions are questions whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no". To form these questions we put an auxiliary verb before its subject: Are you living here? Have you ever been to Italy? Do you usually play tennis on Monday? Did you play football last night? We answer these questions using short answers, using the same auxiliary as in the question: Yes, I am / No, I’m not Yes, I have/ No, I haven’t Yes I do/ No, I don’t Yes, I did/ No, I didn’t In yes/ No questions, the intonation normally goes up at the end.
- 4. WH- QUESTIONSWH- QUESTIONS This type of question always starts with a question word: Who, Where, What, Which, How, How often, How long, Whose, … E.g: Where were you born? How long does it take? Whose is it?
- 5. SUBJECT / OBJECT QUESTIONSSUBJECT / OBJECT QUESTIONS Compare the following questions: Who does Mary love? Who loves Mary? The first questions is what we call an “object question”, we are asking about the object. The second is a “subject question”, we are asking about the subject. In this case, we don’t use inversion or do/does, did in present / past questions: E.g: Who lives with you? Which hotel offered the best price? When we use who or what as subjects, the verb that follows is usually singular, even if a plural answer is expected: E.g: Who wants to start? Who’s read this book? In WH- questions, the intonation usually goes down at the end.
- 6. NEGATIVE QUESTIONSNEGATIVE QUESTIONS We usually maka a negative yes/ no question or wh- question with an auxiliary verb + -n’t to persuade, suggest, criticise, express surprise,…: E.g: Wouldn’t it better to go tomorrow? Why don’t we go out for dinner? Don’t you like it? In formal contexts, or when we want to give some s pecial emphasis to the negative, we can use NOT after the subject. This happens particularly in Yes/ No questions rather than WH-questions: E.g: Can you not get there a bit earlier? Did she not realise that she was driving so fast?
- 7. PREPOSITIONS IN QUESTIONSPREPOSITIONS IN QUESTIONS In questions beginning with WHO, WHAT, WHERE, … prepositions go at the end: E.g: Who do you want to speak to? Which job has Anne applied for? You can use a preposition + WHOM in formal styles: E.g: To whom do you want to speak?
- 8. INDIRECT QUESTIONSINDIRECT QUESTIONS Compare the following sentences:Compare the following sentences: Where’s Tom? Do you know where Tom is? How much does it cost? Do you know how much it costs? Did anyone come yesterday? Could you tell me if / whether anybody came yesterday? In this type of questions (there are two verbs in the same question), we only invert the first verb.
- 9. QUESTION TAGSQUESTION TAGS “They’re going to Greece, aren’t they?” We often make a statement into a question by adding a question tag at the end. The verb in the tag must match the form of the auxiliary verb in the statement. If the statement is positive, the tag is negative and the way round: E.g: Your sister is ill, isn’t she? she doesn’t speak English, does she? The question tag for LET’S is SHALL WE? The question tag for I AM is AREN’T I? We use tag questions: To check that something we’ve said is true. This is not a real question so our voice does not rise at the end. To ask a question. Our voice rises at the end.
- 10. QUESTION TAGSQUESTION TAGS “They’re going to Greece, aren’t they?” We often make a statement into a question by adding a question tag at the end. The verb in the tag must match the form of the auxiliary verb in the statement. If the statement is positive, the tag is negative and the way round: E.g: Your sister is ill, isn’t she? she doesn’t speak English, does she? The question tag for LET’S is SHALL WE? The question tag for I AM is AREN’T I? We use tag questions: To check that something we’ve said is true. This is not a real question so our voice does not rise at the end. To ask a question. Our voice rises at the end.