Question Tags | Ask Questions In English | Speak Confidently

Asking questions in English is so

important for conversation and meeting

new people. I'm Emma from mmmEnglish and

in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to

use question tags correctly. Question tags

are really short questions that are put

onto the end of statements or regular

sentences, so that they become questions.

Question tags are mostly used

in spoken English and native English

speakers use them all the time. Now that

you know about them, you will hear them

all the time. Now, there's lots of

different types of question tags but

one great piece of news is that the

rules are kind of simple to learn.

There's a couple of exceptions but

generally the rules are pretty clear and

simple. So, let's get started!

So, what are question tags? They are questions but

they use a different structure to

regular questions. They're a short

question that we put on the end of a

sentence or a statement. Here's a regular

question: "Are you coming to the party?"

Here's a sentence: "You are coming to the party."

And here's a question tag: "You are

coming to the party, aren't you?"

Suddenly, we've got a question!

So let me show you how to

use question tags. It's simple! You take

a statement: "They are coming." And then you add

your question tag: "aren't they?"

Got it? You'll see patterns

between the main statement and the

question tag. You'll see that the

subject needs to match the pronoun. The

auxiliary verbs need to be the same. Now,

in this example the statement is

positive. But if we change our statement

to a negative, watch what happens to the

question tag.

So, see that the statement

and the questions tag need to be

opposites. If the statement is positive

then the question tag is negative. If the

statement's negative then the question tag

is positive! So, pay attention to the

statement you need to know if it

positive or negative in order to make

your question tag correctly.

Next! If your statement

has a modal verb, like will or should

or could or can, then it follows the same

pattern. The modal verb needs to be in

the question tag!

Now, if the main verb is do or be or have and

notice that these are all verbs that can

also be auxiliary verbs. But if they're in a

sentence as a main verb then they can be

used in the question tag.

But there are a couple of rules

to remember when you're using question

tag with these verbs. Let's start with 'do'. So,

in positive English sentences, often we

leave 'do' out. We don't use it, we don't

include it in our sentence. It's not common

to say "I do like playing football." I would

just say "I like playing football." So, what

does that mean for your question tag?

Well, you have to pretend that it's there!

So, we would really say, "she cooks on Tuesday nights."

and our question tag would be "She cooks

on Tuesday nights, doesn't she?" There's also

an important rule to remember about the

'be' verb as well. Let's look at this

statement:

Now, if we were to try to make a question

tag out of this statement then naturally

you would say "I'm flying to London

tomorrow, amn't I?"

You take the auxiliary verb from the main

statement and move it to the question tag

But this is WRONG!

Don't ask questions about this rule, it doesn't

make any sense! But when you have the

'be' verb with the subject 'I' in the

statement then in the question tag, you

need to use 'are'. So, for this example, you would

say "I'm flying to London tomorrow, aren't I?"

now let's practice a few question tags

together. I want you to do the work now.

So, I want you to complete the sentences

with a question tag.

Nice work!

I bet you do really well then.

I hope that you enjoyed this lesson and if

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you can try out for yourself!

Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next lesson!

Bye for now!