Let’s talk about question tags, shall we?
What’s a tag?
It’s a word or small group of words that we can add to the end of a sentence to change its purpose.
Like turn it into a question?
Yep.
There are a few specific words we could use to do this.
Like “right?” or “okay?”
But we’re going to focus on two-word tags,
which change a bit depending on what comes before them and on the intention.
How do they change?
You tell me.
Take a look at these tags.
What do they start with?
A small verb like ‘is’ or ‘do’.
Yeah, those are special kinds of words.
Do you know what we call those?
Oh, those are auxiliary verbs!
That’s right.
They are all some form of be, do, have, or a modal verb.
Like 'can', 'will', 'should', … things like that.
But how do we know which one to use?
I don’t know.
Look at the first parts of the sentences.
Okay.
Those have auxiliary verbs, too!
And they’re the same!
Almost.
Yeah, each question tag starts with the same auxiliary verb that’s used in the original verb phrase.
But wait, not all of the original sentences have auxiliary verbs.
We still need one for the question tag.
If we can’t repeat what’s already there, which do we use?
Do, does, or did.
We use those any time there’s not already an auxiliary verb?
Yep, that’s why we have those words.
Okay, check out these examples.
There are multiple auxiliary verbs!
But we only use one in the tag.
Which one?
Just the first one, it looks like.
You got it!
Let’s move on to the second part.
What’s the next thing you notice in the question tags?
Some of them are negative?
Which ones?
Again, look at the original verb phrase.
Hm.
If the sentence starts with a positive, then the tag is negative.
But if sentence was first negative, then the tag is positive.
We call this ‘balanced’:
one part of the whole thing is positive, and the other part is negative.
So they cancel each other out.
Yes, which makes sense for a question.
You’re not making a statement, so you don’t want the overall effect to be either positive or negative.
You don’t know whether positive or negative would be better.
That’s why you’re asking the question.
What about the third part of the question tag?
The last word is a pronoun,
and it looks like it matches the subject at the start of the sentence.
Yep, and if that subject was a pronoun already, we just repeat it.
That’s easy enough!
And that’s all it takes to make a question tag?
Well, what about the punctuation?
There’s always a comma before the tag, and a question mark after it.
Great.
Another thing to pay attention to is how you say the tag.
What do you mean?
We raise the pitch of our voice at the end of most questions.
It’s what we do when we’re not sure of the answer.
Well yeah, if we knew the answer, then we wouldn’t ask the question.
Sometimes we think we know the answer, but we want someone else to confirm it for us.
In fact, that’s the main reason we use question tags.
So, if we don’t know what the answer is, we can ask a normal question.
But if we think we know the answer, we say that answer, then use a question tag at the end of it!
That’s right.
We might also use question tags to say what we want the answer to be.
Okay.
What does this have to do with how we say the tag?
If we’re hesitant or not certain of the answer, our voice goes up at the end.
Like this:
“You don’t have any brothers, do you?”
Like that.
But if we are confident in the answer, then our voice goes down at the end,
just like with most declarative sentences.
Like this:
“You don’t have any brothers, do you?”
Like that.
Alright, we have two types of Question Tags: confident ones, and uncertain ones.
Actually, there’s a third, which we use for rhetorical questions.
Could you explain rhetorical questions?
Those are ones that don’t need an answer.
They are structured like questions, but we use them to make a point.
Like what?
We might be expressing disbelief or sarcasm.
Or maybe we’re requesting a favor, offering a suggestion, or issuing a demand.
Oh.
The tone you use to ask the question probably makes a difference.
It does, but for Question Tags, we also change the form a little.
How?
If it’s a rhetorical question, then we’re trying to make a point.
What did we do before to cancel that out?
Uh …
We balanced the positives and negatives?
Very good!
But now we want it unbalanced.
If the sentence was already positive, the tag should be positive as well.
Because that helps us make our point.
Right.
Okay, let me get this straight:
For all question tags, we start with an auxiliary verb and finish with a pronoun.
Yes.
And the tag can be either negative or positive.
It should be the same as the original sentence if we want to show how we feel
or tell someone to do something.
But if we’re really asking a question, the tag should be the opposite of the original sentence.
That’s right!
And we use those question tags to express what we want the answer to be
or what think it is.
If we feel good about it, our voice goes down at the end.
If we don’t, our voice goes up.
You’ve got it!