Volledige samenvatting English 3: global, local and corporate communication

ENGLISH 3: GLOBAL, LOCAL AND
CORPORATE COMMUNICATION
QUESTIONS TAGS:

WHAT & USE:

A tag is a short phrase. It repeats (auxiliary) verb and subjects pronoun. It turns a
statement into a question.

It’s used more in spoken English or informal written English to …

 Check whether something it really true
ex. He’s quite an aggressive fellow, isn’t he?

 Ask the listener to agree with what we have said
ex. That wasn’t really kind, was it?


FORM:

Question tags have an auxiliary verb or non-auxiliary ‘be’ or ‘have’ + a pronoun
subject.
When the main sentence contains an auxiliary verb or the non-auxiliary form of ‘be’ or ‘have’,
we repeat the auxiliary verb in the question tag.

Auxiliary verbs: ‘to be’, ‘to do’, ‘to have’, ‘to can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘shall’, ‘to will’,
‘would’, ‘must’

 If the main sentence is negative, the tag is positive.
ex. You aren’t Spanish, are you?

 If the main sentence is positive, the tag is negative.
ex. You are Spanish, aren’t you?

 If there’s no auxiliary verb in the main sentence, we use ‘to do’
ex. You live in Spain, don’t you?


NOTES:

If the subject is ‘I’ in a positive statement in the present tense, the auxiliary verb in the
negative tag changes to ‘aren’t I?’
ex. I’m sitting next to you, aren’t I?

We use a positive question tag after a sentence containing a negative word, such as ‘no’,
‘never’, ‘hardly’, ‘nobody’, ‘scarcely’, ‘little’ and ‘nothing’.
ex. You’ve never liked me, have you?

With an imperative, common question tags are ‘will you’, ‘would you’, ‘can you’, ‘could you’,
‘won’t you’ and ‘can’t you’
ex. Close the window, will you?
ex. Shut up, won’t you?

If the imperative is negative, we always use ‘will you’
ex. Don’t look at me like that, will you?