DIRECT QUESTIONS

1) General questions

General Questions

Examples:
Do you like dancing?
Where do you live?
How long have you studied English?
Are you Brazilian?
How many cousins do you have?

2) Negative questions: they are used to show surprise or to check if something is true.
e.g: Don’t you like pizza?
Why are you going to bed so early? Don’t you have a day off tomorrow?
Isn’t your brother older than you?
Aren’t you going to call her?
Haven’t you booked a seat at the library?

3) With prepositions at the end: They follow the same structure as a general question, but
when a preposition is needed (about/to/at/with, for, etc.) they are always placed at the
end of the question.
 e.g: Who are you going with?
What are you looking at?
What are you waiting for?
What are you afraid of?

4) Questions without auxiliaries: when the answer to the question is the SUBJECT of the
sentence, then we don’t need an auxiliary to make the question. Compare the following:
Q: Who do you live with?
A: My parents. (In this case, “my parents” is not the subject, because the whole
answer would be “I live with my parents”. And the subject here is “I”).

Q: Who wrote Romeo and Juliet?

A: Shakespeare. (In this case, Shakespeare is the SUBJECT of the sentences because
the whole sentences would be “Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet.”)

More examples of questions without auxiliaries:

✓ Which country makes the best cars? Germany (makes the best cars).
✓ Who won the competition? Djiokovic (won the competition).
✓ Who called yesterday? My mum (called yesterday).

INDIRECT QUESTIONS (more polite, more formal, less confrontational)

There are two main ways of asking questions - directly and indirectly.

Direct: What time is it?

Indirect: Do you know what time it is?

Direct: Why was he late?

Indirect: Can you tell me why he was late?

Direct: What is that?

Indirect: Would you mind telling me what that is?

Using If/whether
If there is no question word (who, what, when, why, how) in a direct question, we need to use if or whether in
the indirect question. For example:
Direct: Is she French?
Indirect: Do you know whether she is French (or not)?