Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation
Asking questions
Build a question from a statement — moving the helping verb, adding do, does or did, and spotting the questions that need no helping verb at all.
A question is a statement with its furniture moved. You already know how to say She is reading; turning it into Is she reading? is a matter of knowing which word to pick up and where to put it down. Once you can see that, every question in English follows the same three or four moves.
If there is a helping verb, move it
She is reading → Is she reading? You have finished → Have you finished? We can leave → Can we leave? The helping verb — is, has, can, will, was — hops over the subject to the front, and nothing else changes at all.
If there is no helping verb, borrow one
He walks to work has no helping verb, so the question borrows do: Does he walk to work? Two things happen at once — the borrowed verb takes the tense and the ending, and the main verb goes back to its plain form. Does she reads and Did she went are the two commonest mistakes in the language.
A question word goes in front of all of it
Where, when, why, how, what time — the question word comes first, and then everything else happens exactly as before. Where did you go? How did they hear about it?
There is one question that breaks the pattern, and it is worth knowing by name. When who or what is itself the one doing the action, nothing moves and nothing is borrowed: Who left the tap running? — not Who did leave the tap running. Compare it with Who did you meet?, where you is the doer and who is the person met. The same little word, two completely different jobs.
Worked example
Turn "The children finished the project on Tuesday" into a question asking when.
Look for a helping verb. There is none — finished is the main verb, standing on its own.
This is always the first check, and it decides everything that follows.
Try it together
Let us make four questions out of one statement, together.
The statement is: Meera bought the tickets at the station yesterday.
1.First a yes-or-no question. The statement is past and has no helping verb, so one must be borrowed. Write the one word that will start the question.
Have a go
Turn "Somebody left the gate open" into a question asking who did it.
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.