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Understanding Three Question Types

There are three basic types of questions: yes/no questions which require a yes or no answer, question-word questions which require a word or phrase as the answer, and choice questions which require selecting one option from the choices given in the question. Yes/no questions use auxiliary verbs like do/did or be/was, question-word questions begin with interrogative words like who, what, when, where, why and have an auxiliary verb, and choice questions provide options separated by "or" for the listener to choose from.

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5 views4 pages

Understanding Three Question Types

There are three basic types of questions: yes/no questions which require a yes or no answer, question-word questions which require a word or phrase as the answer, and choice questions which require selecting one option from the choices given in the question. Yes/no questions use auxiliary verbs like do/did or be/was, question-word questions begin with interrogative words like who, what, when, where, why and have an auxiliary verb, and choice questions provide options separated by "or" for the listener to choose from.

Uploaded by

andrea
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Question Types

There are three basic question types:

 Yes/No: the answer is "yes or no"


 Question-word: the answer is "information"
 Choice: the answer is "in the question"

We look at these in more detail below.

Yes/No questions
Sometimes the only answer that we need is yes or no. Look at
these examples:

answer:
auxiliary verb subject not main verb yes or no

Do you want dinner? Yes, I do.

Can you drive? No, I can't.

Has she not finished her work? Yes, she has.

Did they go home? No, they didn't.

Exception! Main verb be in Present Simple and Past Simple:


main verb be subject

Is Anne French?

Was Ram at home?

Question-word questions
Sometimes we want more than yes or no for an answer. When
asking for information, we usually place a question-word at the
beginning of the sentence. The question-word indicates the
information that we want, for
example: where (place), when (time), why (reason), who (perso
n). Look at these examples:

question auxiliary main answer:


word verb not subject verb information

Where do you live? In Paris.

When will we have lunch? At 1pm.

Why has n't Tara done it? Because she


can't.

Who(m) did she meet? She met Ram.

Who* has run out? Ati has run out.


question auxiliary main answer:
word verb not subject verb information

Who** ran out? Ati ran out.

*When the question-word is who, it acts as the subject.


**In Present Simple and Past Simple tenses, there is no
auxilary verb withwho.

Exception. Main verb be in Present Simple and Past Simple:

question word main verb be subject

Where is Bombay?

How was she?

Choice questions
Sometimes we give our listener a choice. We ask them to
choose between two possible answers. So their answer is
(usually) already in the question. Look at these examples:

answer:
auxiliary verb subject main verb or in question

Do you want tea or coffee? Coffee, please.

Will we meet John or James? John.


Exception. Main verb be in Present Simple and Past Simple:

main verb be subject OR

Is your car white or black?

Were they $15 or $50?

These pages show the three basic types of question. There are
other types of question, for example tag questions.

Tomado de [Link]

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