Reviewing Questions

1. We can use questions:

- To ask for information: What time does the train leave?

- To ask for permission: May I go out?
- To make a request: Could you please help me with this?
- To offer to do something: Shall I carry your suitcase?
- For invitations: Would you like something to drink?
- For suggestions: Shall we go to the cinema?
- To express interest: How are you?

2. There are two types of questions:

- Yes/No questions, where we start the question with an auxiliary or a modal, and
the answer is always yes or no:

o Do you live in Palma? – Yes, I do

o Did he go to the gym yesterday night? – No, he didn’t
o Can you type? – Yes, I can
o Will you help me with my homework? – No, I won’t

Auxiliary/Modal + subject + verb + complements ?

- Open questions or wh- questions, where we start with a wh- word and the
answer is open:

o Where do you live? – In Palma

o What did you do yesterday? – I went trekking
o Where shall we go? – We can go to the cinema
o When will it happen? – Who knows. Soon, I hope
o How long have you been abroad? – For five years now

Wh- word + auxiliary + subject + verb + complements ?

3. Subject and object questions: When the interrogative pronoun works as an object
in the question, we obviously have an auxiliary and a subject as usual, but if the
interrogative pronoun or wh-word works as the subject of the question, we don’t
have an auxiliary.

Object questions Subject questions

Who did you see at the party? Who else came to the party?
What did you say to Peter? What happened there?

4. Questions ending with a preposition: We usually place prepositions at the end of

a question, though in very formal and quite old English it’s also possible to place
 them at the beginning. Remember that if we place a preposition before who, we
have to change it to whom.

Who did you come with? (With whom did you come?*)
What do you do that for?
What did you open the bottle with?

5. Which – What: We normally use which when we have different options to

choose from and what when we ask in general:

What’s your favourite TV programme?

Which is your favourite football team?, Chelsea or Manchester United?

6. Questions with How: We can make questions with how and many different
words, such as: long, far, fast, big, tall, much, many, well, …

How far did you walk?

How long did you stay at the party?
How often do you go to the gym?
How big is the room?

7. Tag questions and short answers:

- When we are asked something, we can give either a long or short answer, never
something in between:

Do you live in Palma? Yes, I live in Palma or Yes, I do

To give a short answer we always use the auxiliary and tense of the question:

Did you play chess yesterday evening? – Yes, I did

Have you been abroad? – No, I haven’t
Will you leave soon? – Yes, I will

- We use tag questions to confirm some information we already know. We use the
auxiliary and tense of the sentence we are confirming, but if it’s affirmative we
give a negative, and if it’s a negative, we give an affirmative.

You live in Palma. Don’t you?

You don’t drive. Do you?
You haven’t been to Paris. Have you?
You didn’t phone. Did you?