Question Tags Ask Questions In English Speak Confidently
Asking questions in English is so
important for conversation and meeting
new people. I’m Emma from mmmEnglish and
in this lesson, I’m going to show you how to
use question tags correctly. Question tags
are really short questions that are put
onto the end of statements or regular
sentences, so that they become questions.
Question tags are mostly used
in spoken English and native English
speakers use them all the time. Now that
you know about them, you will hear them
all the time. Now, there’s lots of
different types of question tags but
one great piece of news is that the
rules are kind of simple to learn.
There’s a couple of exceptions but
generally the rules are pretty clear and
simple. So, let’s get started!
So, what are question tags? They are questions but
they use a different structure to
regular questions. They’re a short
question that we put on the end of a
sentence or a statement. Here’s a regular
question: “Are you coming to the party?”
Here’s a sentence: “You are coming to the party.”
And here’s a question tag: “You are
coming to the party, aren’t you?”
Suddenly, we’ve got a question!
So let me show you how to
use question tags. It’s simple! You take
a statement: “They are coming.” And then you add
your question tag: “aren’t they?”
Got it? You’ll see patterns
between the main statement and the
question tag. You’ll see that the
subject needs to match the pronoun. The
auxiliary verbs need to be the same. Now,
in this example the statement is
positive. But if we change our statement
to a negative, watch what happens to the
question tag.
So, see that the statement
and the questions tag need to be
opposites. If the statement is positive
then the question tag is negative. If the
statement’s negative then the question tag
is positive! So, pay attention to the
statement you need to know if it
positive or negative in order to make
your question tag correctly.
Next! If your statement
has a modal verb, like will or should
or could or can, then it follows the same
pattern. The modal verb needs to be in
the question tag!
Now, if the main verb is do or be or have and
notice that these are all verbs that can
also be auxiliary verbs. But if they’re in a
sentence as a main verb then they can be
used in the question tag.
But there are a couple of rules
to remember when you’re using question
tag with these verbs. Let’s start with ‘do’. So,
in positive English sentences, often we
leave ‘do’ out. We don’t use it, we don’t
include it in our sentence. It’s not common
to say “I do like playing football.” I would
just say “I like playing football.” So, what
does that mean for your question tag?
Well, you have to pretend that it’s there!
So, we would really say, “she cooks on Tuesday nights.”
and our question tag would be “She cooks
on Tuesday nights, doesn’t she?” There’s also
an important rule to remember about the
‘be’ verb as well. Let’s look at this
statement:
Now, if we were to try to make a question
tag out of this statement then naturally
you would say “I’m flying to London
tomorrow, amn’t I?”
You take the auxiliary verb from the main
statement and move it to the question tag
But this is WRONG!
Don’t ask questions about this rule, it doesn’t
make any sense! But when you have the
‘be’ verb with the subject ‘I’ in the
statement then in the question tag, you
need to use ‘are’. So, for this example, you would
say “I’m flying to London tomorrow, aren’t I?”
now let’s practice a few question tags
together. I want you to do the work now.
So, I want you to complete the sentences
with a question tag.
Nice work!
I bet you do really well then.
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you can try out for yourself!
Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next lesson!
Bye for now!