Master 9 Types of English Questions | Grammar Lesson

Hi folks, and welcome back to engVid with me, Benjamin.

In today's lesson, we are looking at lots of different ways to ask questions, because

you can ask questions and you should ask questions in a variety of ways.

Otherwise, you're going to start sounding like a broken record.

Now, this lesson is for my more advanced students.

You need to have a good grounding in grammar to

be able to access all the sort of grammatical

constructions.

And we will be looking at, I don't know, six different ways of asking questions.

Some of these have been covered in detail in separate videos on the engVid website.

So, if you go to the engVid.com and do search,

if you're not sure about any of these, that's

where you will find extra information.

Okay, so let's get started, then.

Well, the most simple form of question is a "yes" or "no" question.

What's meant by that is the answer is either going to be "yes" or "no".

Now, it's formed, the actual question, with an auxiliary verb.

"Auxiliary", yep, it means a helping verb.

These are all examples of auxiliary verbs,

so we've got - repeat after me, yeah, because

I'd like you to be involved over there - "be",

"can", "could", "do", "have", "may", "may

not", "might", "must", "shall", "should", "will", and "would".

Okay?

So, I'm going to use one of those at the beginning,

then a subject, like "I", "you", "he", "she",

"it", "we", "they", and then the rest of the question, for example.

And you also need to conjugate the verb, here.

I can't say, "Be you able to sing me a song?",

because that would sound weird, but I could

say, "Are you able to sing me a song?"

"Am I looking good tonight?"

No, Benjamin, your hair's a mess, as usual.

Oh, sorry, guys.

Okay.

"Can", "Can I borrow your pink pajamas?"

No, they're mine.

Oh, sorry.

"Could", "Could I use your telephone?"

Thanks very much.

"Do you support Tottenham Hotspur?"

No, they're awful, I support Arsenal.

I don't, I support Chelsea.

"Have you been to Piccadilly Circus?"

Now, these two are slightly strange ones,

and they only really work in the first person

singular.

For example, "May you pass me the wine?"

Sounds really weird and old-fashioned.

So, I mean, it still sounds quite weird in the first person.

"May I have a look at your exercise book?"

Very formal.

"Might", so these are coming into some quite polite modals, auxiliary verbs here.

"Might I be able to come to your house for a party later?"

Excellent.

"Must you spend all day playing computer games, Adrian?"

"Must you", really?

Is that such a good use of your time?

"Shall", again, this one, and "may" we like using in first person singular.

"Shall I play you a song?"

"Should".

"Should I visit Niagara Falls on Thursday?"

Yeah, that'd be great.

"Will", and subject.

"Will it rain on Thursday?"

"Would you take a packed lunch if you were going there?"

Yes, I would, and I'd have really nice sandwiches.

Okay.

Now, the answers, we want more than just "yes" and "no".

Okay?

"Yes", "no", it's a bit of a, like, conversation killer.

"Thank you, not talking to you", I'm not going

to do all of these, I'll demonstrate with

one.

Shame, you can't ask me a question.

"Must you walk on that side of the street?"

"Must you walk on that side of the street?"

No, no, you can walk on that side of the street, too.

More ideas, more.

Actually, that side of the street is really

nice, because you'll go through some - you'll

go past some lovely houses.

Yep, so we're expanding, we don't just say "yes", "no", yep.

"We give generously in conversations."

Okay, we ready to move on?

Interrogatives, what are they?

Also known as question words.

"What", we're going to do that repeating thing again, yeah?

Repeat after me.

"What", "where", "when", "why".

"Which", "who", "how", "how many".

There are also some really strange old-fashioned

ones, like "went" and "wither", which are

nice to recognize in maybe a Sherlock Holmes

book or something, or one of those classic

books that I've recommended, but you don't

need to use them, you won't sound that street.

Oh dear, I was meant to click my finger there.

Better.

Okay, so we use these when we want specific information, yes?

"What were you doing last night?"

Yep.

"Where were you?"

"When did you hand in your essay?"

"Why did you email Gill?"

"Which sandwich did you give to Jeremy?"

Yep, very specific information, yeah?

"Place", "time", "reason".

"Object", deciding which one, yeah?

"Person", "manner that something is done in", "quantity".

Okay, so how do we form this question type?

We use one of these, we use an auxiliary, and we put the subject.

Okay, let's pick one.

"How many", "How many do you have?"

Yep.

"Mr. Cameraman, how many do you have?"

"I've got nine biscuits, Benjamin."

"Nine, give me three."

Okay, let's pick another one.

"Where", auxiliary, can be in the past tense.

"Where did you go on holiday?"

"Where did you go on holiday?"

"I went on holiday to Mexico, it was magic."

Shall we have one more?

We've done "where".

What about "who"?

"Who would you most like to go on a train journey with?"

Hmm, interesting one.

What about, do they have to be alive or dead?

It doesn't matter, okay.

"Who would I like to go on a train journey with?"

Hmm, Che Guevara?

I don't know.

"Who would you like to go on a train journey with?"

Onwards.

Now, this is posh English.

I'm not a huge fan of the word "posh", I find it a bit...

But this is kind of the sort of indirect

style of the English upper-to-middle classes.

They don't use direct style of communication.

It's more kind of, "I might be asking you a

question or I might not be asking you a question."

So, questions can be disguised, like they're in camouflage.

Yes?

"I suppose the question is, when are England

ever going to win the World Cup again?"

Was that a question?

Look at the stuff I put before the question.

I said, "I suppose the question is".

I didn't just say, "When are England going to win the World Cup again?"

I said, "I suppose the question is, when are

England going to win the World Cup again?"

So, if we use "I suppose", then we're making the question disguised.

Yep.

"I suppose the question is, to be or not to be, that is the question."

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer..."

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, we can disguise our questions by being sort of indirect.

Another way of being indirect is by using...

Sorry, I'm being a bit weird in this lesson. I do apologize.

We can use modals.

It's because I've been doing this for a long time.

Okay, we can use modals at the beginning of a question.

Okay, are you ready for this?

So, "Could you pass me the water?"

Yep, sounds nice. Yep.

"Are you able to write my name on the board there for me?"

Um...

Do-do-do-do-do.

"Should I go and..." blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so modals at the beginning of a

question make it nice and polite and indirect.

Okay, I've got more for you. I'm going to do this now.

"You with me?"

What? What are you talking about now, Benjamin? What?

"You with me", short for "Are you with me?"

In other words, are you going along on this intellectual

journey with me and understanding what I am talking about?

Now, what I'm looking at now is other ways that we can use questions.

And one of those ways is checking exactly what I just said.

"Are you with me?" Yeah?

"Are you... Are we in agreement here? Are you sharing my

ideas? Are we on the same page? Are we on the same wavelength?"

You could say, "Is that clear?"

And you're hoping that you're going to see some nodding heads.

Do you see that? So, I'm thinking more of a kind of a business context here

where I'm spelling out the negative consequences of not taking a certain action.

Do you see that? Unless we do this today, there will

be dire - dire meaning serious - dire consequences.

Uh-huh. Okay.

So, we can use questions for other purposes.

One of those is checking the person is, you know, getting the drift of your argument.

We can use it at the beginning of a talk or a

presentation to introduce a topic, for example.

"So, what will be the benefits of modernizing the railway?"

"So, what will be the benefits of blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?"

Much more interesting than the railway, clearly.

Okay, so it's a rhetorical question.

We don't expect an answer.

Yeah, we're getting the interest from the

audience by asking a question, making them think.

Sometimes we don't know what we're going to say next.

It happens to me a lot.

So, we can say these things like, "What was I going to say?"

"Hmm, how can I put this?"

Should we practice saying that?

"What was I saying?"

Yeah, you say that when you don't know what you're going to say next.

"What was I saying?"

"What were we speaking about?"

"How can I put this?"

So, the tone we say it in is like, "Hmm, it's a Mr. E."

Okay, so we can use questions.

And are you with me?

Introducing a topic, giving time to think.

We can challenge people.

"Are you saying that?"

Yeah, so it's almost like a bit of a pub fight, this.

It sounds a bit, like, confrontational.

"Seriously, are you saying that?"

So, I'm using a question here to, kind of,

to challenge, to argue against, to say, "Are

you sure you mean that?"

Because it sounds to me like you're saying something really, really silly.

And the adverb, we could have it at the beginning.

"Seriously, are you saying that?"

Or we could have it before, between the subject and the verb.

"Are you seriously saying that?"

So, the "seriously" is emphasizing quite how ridiculous this action is.

Okay.

Now, we can also use questions to lead someone to a particular "pov", hmm?

Point of view.

So, we can shape the way people are thinking.

We can...

This is checking.

This is, kind of, encouraging them to be on the same page as us.

"Don't you want to make mummy happy?"

Sounds a bit creepy, that, coming from me.

So, we're encouraging the child to want to

please the mother by asking this as a question.

Or here, a more formal use of this technique.

"That would be disastrous, would it not?"

"That would be disastrous, would it not?"

Yeah, it's kind of saying...

The expected answer is "Yes, yes, yes.

That would be a disaster.

Yes, very serious.

Yes, no.

We mustn't do that.

No, no, no."

Okay, right.

We're now going to have a look at the mysterious world of question tags.

This is fun, isn't it?

I just used a question tag.

Question tags.

We make a statement, we ask a question.

We use modals or auxiliaries to do this.

For example, "can", "could".

"It can be hot in the desert, can't it?"

I'm not going to give examples with each.

You might be able to do a couple in the quiz coming up very soon.

"Could", "be able to", "might", "should", "must", "will", and "would".

These are our bank of auxiliaries that we can use to form question tags.

Now, if you make the statement in the positive,

then the question needs to be in the negative

and vice versa.

To demonstrate, "You're cold, aren't you?"

Okay?

"You're cold, aren't you?"

Negative, here.

"He isn't crying, is he?"

Oh no, how sad.

"He isn't crying, is he?"

Negative, positive.

Positive, negative.

Okay, I'm going to be going into this in quite

a lot more detail in a lesson coming up very

soon.

So, in that lesson I will be showing you how

to use the question tags in a huge range of

tenses.

So, another grammar omnibus.

I hope this has been useful for you.

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You can subscribe to get more of my content, and

if you want any extra help with your English,

depending on my availability, I may be able

to help with Skype tuition, helping speaking

and writing in particular.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you in the next one.

Take care.