Yes/No questions for advanced English students

Hey, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on yes/no questions

for advanced speakers. So at this level, I know most of you know how to form yes/no questions

with auxiliary verbs, right? So an auxiliary verb always comes at the start of a yes/no

question, like, "Do you have a pen?" "Did you try the soup?" "Are you hungry?" "Can

you drive?" "Have you read The Hunger Games?" which is a novel, okay? So advanced speakers,

what you need to understand is that these are grammatically correct sentences, grammatically

correct questions. They're perfect. However, when you speak to a native speaker, they might

not always form the questions in this way. Occasionally, we get lazy. We forget words.

And what we do is we usually drop the auxiliary verb at the start of a yes/no question. So

for example, "Do you have a pen?" becomes, "Do you have a pen?" Okay? Instead of, "Do

you have a pen?" "Do you have a pen?" So this is possible, and this is very common for native

speakers. "How about, 'Did you try the soup?'" Just remove the auxiliary verb. "Did you

try the soup?" "Hey, you try the soup?" Okay? "Did you try the soup?" becomes, "You try

the soup?" So again, this is really important because it helps you to understand what native

speakers are actually saying. Just because they don't say the auxiliary verb, you might

become confused. Say, "Why is their intonation going up? Why are they asking a question?"

They're asking the question just because in speaking, in conversational, informal English,

we don't always use that auxiliary verb at the start of a yes/no question. So, "Are you

hungry?" becomes, "Hey, you hungry?" "You want to eat?" Right? Instead of, "Do you want

to eat?" "You want to eat?" "You want to go out?" "Do you want to go out?" Okay? "Can

you drive?" Okay? So, you want to go to -- let's say that you want to go to see a movie, and

you want to know which one of your friends can drive. "Hey, you drive?" "Can you drive?"

Okay? You can also be, "Do you drive?" That's the only tricky part. Sometimes you don't

know which auxiliary verb they're using, but the basic meaning is the same, right? You

want to get, "Can they drive?" or "Do they drive?" It's very similar. "Have you read

The Hunger Games?" Remove the auxiliary verb "have" and say, "Hey, you read The Hunger

Games? Have you read it? You read it?" Okay? So, guys, especially advanced speakers and

new speakers, intermediate speakers, just be aware that there are native speakers, many

of them, who do this and use this structure. If you want to test your understanding of

this, check out the quiz on www.engvid.com. Good luck, guys. Take care.