Question Tags Easily Speak Like a Native

Hello, everyone.

And welcome to English with Lucy.

Today I’ve got a grammar lesson for you.

A lot of you have asked for this one because

I did mention going into further detail about this topic

in the previous video.

If you want to watch that one,

then you can click right here.

Today we’re going to be talking about question tags.

If you learn how to appropriately

understand and use question tags,

You’re going to…you’re going to

a) sound more like a native speaker when you speak,

and b) be able to understand
native speaker when they speak to you.

So it’s really really important thing to learn.

So this lesson is going to help you

with your English grammar and your English speaking,

and your listening as well really.

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Happy talking!

Right. Let’s get started with the lesson.

So what are question tags?

Oh, that was one there.

So a question tag is a very short question

placed at the end of a statement.

They are used when asking for two things.

And these two things are

  1. confirmation

and 2) agreement.

So in order to better understand native speakers,

you need to listen to their intonation

when they use question tags.

So let’s cover this first

and then move on to how they’re formed.

So let’s do this one.

It means, I know you like cake,

I’m just trying to confirm the fact that you like cake.

I’m not sure if you like cake.

I’m not sure about what the answer will be,

so I’m checking the fact again.

I want to know the answer I’m not sure.

I’m making conversation,

I’m confirming something that I’ve already known.

See the difference?

So it’s somthing that’s really really simple,

but I still have a lot of students that
get really really confused with question tags.

So let’s clarify this now.

Now, so those are the negative ones.

There are just a couple of exceptions.

The first exception is with “am”.

which you can say,

but it sounds very very formal.

Now statements using

are all treated as negative statements.

So at first glance,

it might look like a positive statement,

and a positive question tag.

But you need to make sure

that you see the negative word before it.

OK, guys. Your homework today is

to write in the comments three statements
with question tags.

Using what we’ve learnt today,

and I want you to make me laugh.

I want you to make them as funny as possible.

So see if you can do that.