Question tags (Part I)

Hi there everyone!

I can see that our last post (Internet slang) really caught your attention, didn´t it? I wanna say a big thank you for all the visits, pings and trackbacks we’ve been getting for the last couple of weeks. It’s just been amazing!

But I reckon you really want the answers for the Internet Slang challenge, don’t you? Well, here they are: 

TBC “The time of the meeting is still to be confirmed”

CU “See you tomorrow”

AFAIR “As far as I remember, Susan’s birthday is the 23rd of July”

AFAIK “As far as I know, Susan hasn’t gone anywhere this year”

IMO “In my opinion, Friends was the best TV show ever”

TQ ” For all your help I can only say thank you, thank you very much”

TBA “The train destination Brighton has been cancelled. The platform for the next train to be announced.”

IDK “Are you seriously asking me what’s the weather gonna be like in November? I don’t know!”

L8R “See you later”

SLAP “Going to the beach today? Sounds like a plan!”

 

FYI, using them is the best way to remember them! So, why not start using them in your social media posts?

But today, it’s question tags day! 😆

 

What are questions tags and when do we use them?

Question tags are the short questions that sometimes go at the end of a statement (either negative or affirmative) or imperative sentence, usually used when speaking but they’re not uncommon in informal writing either. Can you spot any on this post? Scroll up and look for them!

Any luck? Here they are for you to check:

I can see that our last post really caught your attention, didn´t it?

But I reckon you really want the answers for the Internet Slang challenge, don’t you?

Although question tags have many uses (inluding being an indicator of irony, of course 😉 ) we can generally divide them into two different categories:

1. When the tag is a real question. This means we are really not sure about something and we need the person we’re talking to, to answer the question. E.g.: “The film starts at 6, doesn’t it?” (We think the film starts at 6 but we are not sure, so we need the interlocutor to confirm)
2.  When the tag is not a real question. We use it when we are sure of the answer but we want to convey politeness, emphasis, irony, etc. E.g.: “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” (We know that it is not a beautiful day)

 

When we are using the tag to get an answer it has a raising intonation: the voice goes up

Whereas when we are using it to be ironic or polite it has a falling intonation: the voice goes down.

How do we form question tags?

The most important thing to remember when we form question tags is that if the main sentence is affirmative the question tag is going to be negative and vice versa. Here we can see an example with the verb to be:

E.g.: “Susan is your sister, isn’t she?”  vs  “Susan is not your sister, is she?”

As you can see, when forming a question tag, if we have a name as a subject we change it for its corresponding pronoun  (Susan = she).

But, what happens when I have a sentence with any other verb? Take a look at this chart:

TO BE	AUXILIARIES
Paul is late, isn’t he?  Sarah is not coming, is she?	We won the competition, didn’t we? You don’t like cats, do you?

You can see that, if the main sentence is negative we simply use the auxiliary in affirmative but, if the main sentence is affirmative we need to introduce the auxiliary verb we would use for the negative.

So, can you do the question tags for the following sentences?

exercises

And here it is, the challenge for the week: Can you do the correct question tag for this sentence?:

“I am the best, _________?”

Ok, folks! That’s all for today! Remember you can follow us on social media for games, funny pics and so on! I’ll leave you the links below, don’t forget to comment and spread the word! 😀

G+ community: Euroschool of English (Coruña)

Facebook: The Red Lobster page

Twitter: Euroschool of English Coruña

 

CU! 😛