A Guide To Learn English Language

Ques­tion tag is one sim­ple thing that trou­bles many non-native Eng­lish speak­ers in using them. They are very easy to under­stand but they are tough to use in reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions because, they are often mixed up with assertive sen­tences. As you all know, there are four kind of sen­tences in Eng­lish, viz., Assertive, Inter­rog­a­tive, Imper­a­tive and Exclam­a­tory. All the sen­tences that we speak fall into one of the above cat­e­gories. Assertive sen­tences are gen­eral state­ments or the state­ments that are made in casual talk or writ­ing. Inter­rog­a­tive sen­tences are used for ask­ing questions.

What is a ques­tion tag?

These are used you want to get answer as either ‘yes’ or ‘no’

Sim­ple Eng­lish sen­tences formed by club­bing assertive and inter­rog­a­tive sentence.

The verb and pro­noun used in the ques­tion tag should be in agreed form with the sub­ject and verb used in assertive sentence.

The struc­ture of ques­tion tag is aux­il­iary verb (do, have, are, can etc) + pro­noun (I, you, he etc) and ques­tion mark symbol.

E.g. Ravi is going to park today, isn’t he?

Learn Eng­lish Lan­guage — Ques­tion Tags

The same sen­tence can also be framed as ‘Ravi is going to park today, isn’t he going to park?’

Only the last part ‘isn’t he?’ is known as ques­tion tag.

The ques­tion tag should be in neg­a­tive form of the sen­tence, if the sen­tence is in pos­i­tive form then ques­tion tag will be in neg­a­tive form and vice versa.

Some Exam­ples:

1. It is rain­ing out­side, isn’t it? (Neg­a­tive ques­tion tag)
2. You haven’t taken your break­fast, have you? (Pos­i­tive ques­tion tag)
3. Joseph and Candy are get­ting mar­ried next Mon­day, are they ?

Note: I + am is a spe­cial case, its ques­tion tag is ‘are you’
E.g. I am watch­ing movie, aren’t you?