Asking questions in English is a natural way to elicit information or receive responses from our addressees. When we converse with other people, we tend to ask questions to have more information about the topic we are talking about, or even make follow-up questions to make the conversation longer and more interesting.
How do you ask questions? Do you ask questions that are answerable only by Yes or No, or you ask questions that could prompt your interlocutors to answer briefly?
When we ask questions, we sometimes don’t care about what types of questions in English we are using, so long as we are understood by our listener. We don’t think about the structure or the pattern of words in our questions. We know we are asking a question because of the intonation.
Intonation when asking questions is crucial to determine that the sentence we uttered is a question form. Questions are always in rising intonation, because the purpose of it is to get a response or information from the listener.
We have previously written about question forms in English grammar and how to form them, but in this article, we added one more form with a more detailed explanation. We are going to discuss the types of questions in English and give you more examples for better understanding.
There are basically five types of questions in English. They are present in our everyday conversations, whatever the situation is. Whether we are a response-seeker or a conversation starter, we ask and answer questions.
Below are the five types of questions in English and their examples.
These are questions that are answerable by yes or no. They are also called close-ended questions because the answers don’t need further information, unless the speaker wants to give more details about their answer.
Sometimes, responses are expected to be complete – not just Yes or No, but a more complete structure following the question.
Examples:
Question: Do you have a pen?
Answer 1: Yes. / No.
Answer 2: Yes, I have. / No, I don’t have.
Answer 3. Yes, I have a pen. / No, I don’t have a pen.
Question: Are you going on a holiday this summer?
Answer 1: Yes. / No.
Answer 2: Yes, I am. / No, I am not.
Answer 3: Yes, I am going on a holiday this summer. / No, I am not going on a holiday this summer.
Question: Have you seen Ms. Wilson?
Answer 1: Yes. / No.
Answer 2: Yes, I have. / No, I haven’t.
Answer 3: Yes, I have seen her. / No, I haven’t seen her.
Question: Would you like to have some tea?
Answer 1: Yes. / No.
Answer 2: Yes, I’d love to. / No, I won’t.
Answer 3: Yes, I’d like to have some tea. / No, I don’t like to have some tea.
“Yes or no” types of questions in English are the most commonly-used in asking questions. They start with auxiliary verbs such as do, did, has, have, or some modals like would, should, as well as be-verbs am, is, are and their past tense.
The structure of the “yes or no” questions is be/auxiliary verb + subject + main verb + noun/noun phrase.
These types of questions in English are commonly used when we want a specific answer to our questions.
Examples:
What is your favorite color? – blue / My favorite color is blue.
Where do you come from? – Japan / I come from Japan.
When is Christmas day? – December 25th
Why do you study English? – to improve my English skills
How did you get here? – by plane
The answers to the example questions above are short answers, but we can always have long answers according to the structure of the question.
These types of questions in English are more elaborative. We don’t anticipate a simple yes or no answer when asking this type of question, but we want long answers. Simply, we need more information based on the question we asked.
They start with WH-questions: what, when, where, who, why, and how.
Examples:
What parts of the sentence are not easy to understand? (Here, we need to answer in an elaborative way)
Who are the main characters in the story and what are their roles? (State the characters and their roles)
When was the last time you visited a hairdresser’s?
How did the students achieve a high score in the recent Math exam?
Open-ended types of questions in English are usually asked in various settings where the one asking the question expects the respondent to answer in a more detailed way.
Tag questions are used to ask for confirmation or agreement about a particular topic. The tag question can either be affirmative or negative.
Examples:
You’re going to visit your mom, aren’t you?
Mr. Walters will make a speech at the meeting, won’t he?
It’s not raining outside, is it?
They’re not coming with us, are they?
There was a power interruption, wasn’t there?
Mandy can’t get here on time, can she?
Tag questions also have embedded auxiliary verbs. We use “do, did, or didn’t” in our tags.
Examples:
The chairman told his secretary to write down the minutes of the meeting, didn’t he?
Ms. Park always sets the atmosphere high, doesn’t she?
You don’t give your money away, do you?
Sometimes, in verbal conversations, tag questions are not used. Instead, most speakers use “right?” at the end of their questions to ask for confirmation about something.
Examples:
She is the new supervisor, right?
I already spoke to you about this, right?
These types of questions in English are used when your expected answer is within the options given. We usually use the conjunction “or” in asking choice questions.
Examples:
Do you want to see me or not?
What kinds of movies do you like: comedy, horror, fantasy, or adventure?
Did you take your son to his school or the nanny did it?
Can you send me the email today or you prefer to send it tomorrow?
Does your mom like ice cream or cake?
Are you a student or a teacher?
Choice questions can be replied with short or long answers, depending on how the listener would respond to the questions.
Learning the basic types of questions in English is crucial for language learners for effective and meaningful communication. It’s not easy to take note all of these types of questions in English, but by slowly practicing and mastering them will help learners improve their English conversational skills as well as their inter-social skills.
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