General English Level 4 V 3

UNIT 04 What happened? TOPIC 03 This happened to me

	LANGUAGE FOCUS 03 Tag questions in past tenses
	We use tag questions for two reasons.

1. Checking

Jackie says:
Jackie:	You were OK, weren't you Lucas?

Jackie thinks and hopes Lucas was OK, but she isn't sure.
We use tag questions when we think we know the answer but we are not sure and we want to check.

2. Asking the other speaker to agree

Jackie says:
Jackie:	Yeah and the parachute fell on top of you and you almost drowned, didn't you Ming?

Jackie knows the answer (Ming has already told her the story). She is just asking Ming to agree with her and then continue the story.
We use tag questions when we want the other speaker to agree with us. Often we do this because we want the other speaker to continue speaking. We are encouraging them to go on.

We call the last part of a tag question, for example: weren't you?, didn't it?, didn't you? a question tag .
We can form tag questions in all tenses. The tense in the tag should match the tense in the question .

Examples

Present : You don't like rock climbing, do you?
Past : He was really high up, wasn't he?

When the first part of the sentence is positive , we use a negative question tag .

Positive sentence	Negative question tag		Answer
The rider fell off,	didn't	he?	Yes, he did.
It rained all day yesterday,	didn't	it?	No, it didn't.
You were going very fast,	weren't	you?	No, I wasn't.

When the first part of the sentence is negative, we use a positive question tag..

Negative sentence	Positive question tag		Answer
The rider didn't fall off,	did	he?	Yes, he did.
It didn't rain yesterday,	did	it?	No, it didn't.
You weren't going very fast,	were	you?	No, I wasn't.

When we answer a tag question, we can use short answers . The answer tells us what really happened.

We reply to the statement rather than the tag . If we agree with a positive statement, we say yes. If we agree with a negative statement, we say no.

Examples

From the conversation, we know that Lucas fell off the horse.
We would answer the tag questions below like this:

Lucas fell off the horse, didn't he ? Yes he did. (we agree)
Lucas didn't fall off the horse, did he ? Yes he did. (we don't agree)

Let's imagine a friend had an accident but did not have to go to hospital.
We would answer the tag questions below like this:

Your friend had to go to hospital, didn't he ? No he didn't (we don't agree)
Your friend didn't have to go to hospital, did he ? No he didn't (we agree)

The meaning of the tag question depends on how you say it.

1. We use rising intonation in the question tag, when we are checking information.

You were OK, weren't you Lucas?

2. We use falling intonation when we know the answer, and are asking the question to encourage the speaker to continue.

Yeah and the parachute fell on top of you and you almost drowned, didn't you Ming?

Find out more about intonation.

Examples - checking

1	Read the examples.
2	Listen to the examples.
3	Practise saying each example. Use the Pause button. Check your intonation.

You enjoyed rock climbing, didn't you ?
That was a close shave, wasn't it ?
He didn't escape, did he ?

Examples - asking to agree

1	Read the examples.
2	Listen to the examples.
3	Practise saying each example. Use the Pause button. Check your intonation.

They didn't lose, did they ?
It wasn't a big fire, was it ?
She was good at sports at school, wasn't she ?

Now go to 04 LANGUAGE FOCUS Tag questions in past tenses - task.