QUESTION WORDS (INTERROGATIVE SENTENCE)

Basically, there are 3 types of interrogative sentence.

1. WH questions
2. YES/NO questions
3. QUESTION TAGS

WH QUESTIONS

Question word Example

where Where do you live?
Who are you?*
who
Who did you phone?**
when When do you get up?
What is this?*
what
What are you doing?**
why Why do you smoke?
Whose org Whose book is this? kepemilikan
Which yang mana? Which bus do you take to school?
How old are you?
How long
how How often
How far
How many/much

Where did you go swimming? > In the swimming pool in town.

Why did you go there? > Because it’s a nice, big pool.
Who did you go swimming with? > With Amy.
What time did you meet Amy? > At 10 o’clock.
How did you get there? > On the bus
When will you go there again? > I think it will be around next week!

If who, what or which is the subject of the question, it comes before the verb and we don’t use do
as an auxiliary.

Who went out for curry? (subject – who)

What happened? (subject – what)
Which looks better, this or that one? (subject – which)
Object questions follow the structure we looked at before.

Who did you go out for curry with? (subject – you; object – who)
Which restaurant does Oliver like most? (subject – Oliver; object – which)
What did they do after the restaurant? (subject – they; object – what)

YES/NO QUESTIONS
We usually form questions by putting an auxiliary verb, or a modal verb, before the subject.

Does it suit me?

Has Mum called?
Can you get the tea?
Shall I pass you to Oliver?

Is Oliver there?
Was it good?

QUESTION TAGS

Is a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement is turned into interrogative (the

“tag”). E.g, “you are john, aren’t you?

Question tags are the short questions that we put on the end of sentences – particularly in spoken
English. There are lots of different question tags but the rules are not difficult to learn.

Positive/negative

If the main part of the sentence is positive, the question tag is negative ….

 He’s a doctor, isn’t he?

 You work in a bank, don’t you?

... and if the main part of the sentence is negative, the question tag is positive.

 You haven’t met him, have you?

 She isn’t coming, is she?

With auxiliary verbs

The question tag uses the same verb as the main part of the sentence. If this is an auxiliary verb
(‘have’, ‘be’) then the question tag is made with the auxiliary verb.

 They’ve gone away for a few days, haven’t they?

 They weren’t here, were they?
 He had met him before, hadn’t he?
 This isn’t working, is it?
Without auxiliary verbs

If the main part of the sentence doesn’t have an auxiliary verb, the question tag uses an
appropriate form of ‘do’.

 I said that, didn’t I?

 You don’t recognize me, do you?
 She eats meat, doesn’t she?

With modal verbs

If there is a modal verb in the main part of the sentence the question tag uses the same modal
verb.

 They couldn’t hear me, could they?

 You won’t tell anyone, will you?

Intonation

Question tags can either be ‘real’ questions where you want to know the answer or simply asking for
agreement when we already know the answer.

If the question tag is a real question we use rising intonation. Our tone of voice rises.
If we already know the answer we use falling intonation. Our tone of voice falls.