Gateway to Grammar: Question Tags - What Are They and How Do They Work?
I don’t know why I chose cheese guys, I just thought it was a silly enough example for you to remember it. We are looking at question tags today, the little confusing question bits at the end of a native English person’s sentence.
What is a Question Tag?
Question tags are two or three words added to the end of a sentence used to check if the speaker is correct in what they are saying. You’ll notice they always use auxiliary verbs like ‘to do’, ‘to be’, or ‘to have’, or modal verbs like ‘will’, ‘can’, or ‘should’:
You want cheese, don’t you?
It stinks, doesn’t it?
Your boyfriend has some great cheese, doesn’t he?
Lisa said you could have her cheese, didn’t she?
It’s your favourite food, isn’t it?
You’re hungry, aren’t you?
You have dreamed about cheese, haven’t you?
How Do Questions Tags Work?
Question tags are a way of making a statement in English and then asking your conversation partner if they agree with you. They are used all the time in native conversations, and I think we often use them as a way to show we aren’t 100% sure about something, or to encourage our conversation partner to tell us their opinion.
How Do You Build a Question Tag?
There are a few steps, but trust me, this gets much easier with a little practise.
You begin with a statement → It’s late
Identify the pronoun and auxiliary verb → it is
Swap the pronoun and auxiliary verb around → is it
Swap from positive to negative, or negative to positive, and add a question mark → isn’t it?
Put your statement and question tag together → It’s late, isn’t it?
Congratulations, you made a question tag.
So if you use “you have” you get → haven’t you? I am → aren’t I? he is → isn’t he? we aren’t → are we? they can → can’t they?
What About ‘Normal’ Verbs?
If your statement uses a normal verb (not an auxiliary or modal verb) like eat, sleep, or walk, you use the auxiliary verb for do. Confusing? Yes it is, so let’s look at some more examples:
You run pretty often, don’t you?
He works at the FBI, doesn’t he?
That group of cats look hungry, don’t they?
Summing Up
It takes a little practise to get used to it, but it will become automatic after a while. Remember these quick steps:
Make a statement.
Take the pronoun and auxiliary verb, and swap them around.
If it’s positive make it negative, if it’s negative make it positive.
Add a question mark and add it all together.
I hope you enjoy playing around with question tags and confusing native English speakers as much as we confuse each other!
