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Where you go? Is you coming from England? How long do you stay in Malta? |
Do these sound familiar?
Don’t worry, it happens to everyone who embarks on the journey called learning English 😀
Creating questions in English can be tricky. You might be familiar with the WH-words, you throw in some was or does as verbs here and there and you still find yourself repeating and rephrasing questions to end up getting this reaction from the people around you:
Isn’t this the most frustrating thing ever?!
Luckily, we got your back!
There is a simple way to crack the code behind the complex way of creating questions in English.
We just need to mix 4 things together, keep them in order, memorise the rules and voila – mission accomplished – you’ll create the right questions in no time!
Let’s start from scratch!
There are two types of questions in English – open and closed questions.
Closed questions are the ones we answer with Yes/No answers – very straightforward, without much explanation. These are commonly used when you meet someone for the first time, or you need specific information from someone.
Caaaaan you think of any examples?
We’ll give you a hint….
Does this ring a bell?
Or perhaps something more convenient such as:
- Do you like ice-cream?
- Are you Maltese?
- Have you eaten anything for dinner?
All closed questions, easily answered.
Now, on the other side, we have open questions.
Open questions are a bit trickier as we need to give more information when answering them.
The way we make them is by using WH-words.
- What did you have for dinner?
- How often do you have English classes?
- Why are you studying English?
As you can see, these are not the types of questions that can be answered by just saying yes or no.
NOW, this is all fun and games, but how does this help you create questions?
The 4-steps Formula to Create Questions
We have a simple way for you to understand how both closed and open questions are created:
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Open questions |
Closed questions |
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2. Subject |
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3. Verb |
The numbers represent the order of the words in the question.
Let’s start with open questions first:
- For open questions, you start with the WH-words – that’s the first word that you use.
- What do you do for work?
- Why aren’t you eating?
- How often do you ride your bike?
- The second word is an auxiliary verb, or commonly known as helping verbs.
As you can see, we have three auxiliary verbs in English – to be, to do and to have.
We need to change the verbs accordingly and in the correct tense.
- What follows the auxiliary verb is a subject – the third word we need to use.
A subject is any doer of the action, which is usually a person, but there are many exceptions.
- And what comes at the end of it is a verb, as the last word we need to use.
Easy peasy, isn’t it?
Not sure if it works?
Check our examples from before:
- What (1) do(2) you(3) do(4) for work?
- Why(1) aren’t(2) you(3) eating(4)?
- How(1) often(2) do(3) you(4) ride your bike?
You see? The pattern works like a charm!
There are many exceptions, but for now, this is more than enough for you to grasp the complex way of creating questions in English.
What about closed questions?
Closed questions are even easier to create!
You can see from the table that there are 3 things you need to remember in order to create closed questions:
- You start with an auxiliary verb;
- You proceed with using a Subject;
- You finish your question with a verb.
Shall we look at any examples?
- Do(1) you(2) have(3) a lot of homework?
- Were(1) you(2) eating(3) lunch when I called you?
- Have(1) you(2) ever(3) visited Malta?
And that’s it!
Use this simple formula and you’ll see, you will create grammatically correct questions every time!
Let’s see how well you will do – post your questions about Malta and learning English at Maltalingua and we’ll make sure to answer them all <3
Stay tuned for our next blog!
Download Worksheet Creating-Questions-Worksheet