question tags
TRANSCRIPT
What are Question Tags ?
Question tags are the short
Questions that we put on
the end of sentences
particularly in spoken English
Why are they used ?
They are mainly used in speech
when we want to:confirm that
something is true or not, or to encourage
a reply from the person we are speaking to.
Rules of Question Tags?
A positive statement is followed by a negative question tag .A negative statement is followed by a positive question tag.When the verb in the main sentence is in the present simple we form the question tag with do / does.
If the verb is in the past simple we use did.When the statement contains a word with a negative meaning, the question tag needs to be positive
About Question Tags?They are often used
for checking information that we
think we know is true.There is one weird
exception: the question tag after I am
is aren't I.For example: I'm in charge of the food,
aren't I?
Examples of Question Tags
Examples with positive sentences with negative tags are - She's Italian, isn't
she? They've been to Japan, haven't
they? She'll have been
cooking all day, won't she?
Some examples with negative sentences with positive tags are -We aren't late, are we? She hasn't eaten all the cake, has she? You hadn't been sleeping, had you?
ConclusionQuestion tags are fragments that helps us to create a question. They are indicator of politeness, emphasis or irony. Although they have the grammatical form of a question, they may be rhetorical (not expecting an answer).and they are of 2 types - negative and positive.