TYPES OF QUESTIONS

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People sometimes have problem how to make questions in English. They are confused whether they should use to be, or question words. Here are some types of question.  You can practise making questions based on the texts below. 

James Brown was sixteen years old. He had been at the same school for five years, and had always been a very bad pupil. He was lazy, he fought with other pupils, he was rude to teachers, and did not obey the rules of the school. His headmaster tried to make him work and behave better, but he was never successful – and the worst thing was that, as James grew older, he was a bad influence on the younger boys.

      Then at last James left school. He tried to get a job with a big company, and the manager wrote to the headmaster to find out what he could say about James.

      The headmaster wanted to be honest, but did not want to be too hard, so he wrote, “If you can get James Brown to work for you, you will be lucky.”

1. Answer the following questions based on the text above.

A.      Yes-No Questions

1.       Was James sixteen years old?

2.       Did he obey the rules of the school?

3.       Didn’t the headmaster try to make James work hard?

4.       Was the headmaster successful in making James work hard?

B.      Question Tag (Tag Questions)

1.       James was lazy, wasn’t he?

2.       The headmaster was not successful in making James behave better, was he?

3.       The headmaster told the truth to the manager, didn’t he?

C.      Alternative Questions

1.       Was James diligent or lazy?

2.       Did James continue his study or did he try to get a job?

3.       Did the manager write to James or to the headmaster?

D.      Wh -Questions

1.       What was James like?

2.       Whom did James fight with?

3.       Why did the manager write to the headmaster?

E.      Ask these questions

Ask me ….

1.       a. if James was rude

      b. what James was like

2.      a. if James tried to get a job

      b. what he tried to get

3.      a. whether the manager wrote to the headmaster

      b. whom the manager wrote to

2.      Make your own questions based on the following passages.

Text 1            Mary’s mother was nearly seventy, and Mary and her husband        wanted to give the old lady a nice birthday present. She liked drinking tea, so Mary ordered an electric machine which made tea and then woke up in the morning. She wrapped it up in pretty paper and brought it to her mother on her birthday. Then her mother opened the package. Mary showed her how to use it.       “Before you go to bed, put the tea in the pot and the water in the kettle,” she explained to the old lady, “and don’t forget to switch the electric on. Then, when you wake up in the morning, your tea will be ready.”       After a few days, Mary’s mother rang up and said, “Perhaps I’m being rather silly, but there’s one thing I’m confused: why do I have to go to bed to make the tea?” Text 2 When Dick was six years old, he went and stayed with his grandparents in the country for a few weeks in the summer. He talked a lot with his grandmother while he was there, and she told him a lot of interesting things about their family which he had not known before. When he came home again to his own parents, he said to his father, “Is it true that I was born in London, Daddy?”       “Yes, it is, Dick,” his father answered.       “And were you really born in Germany?” Dick asked.       “Yes, that’s right,” his father answered. “I was.”       “And is it true that Mummy was born in Ireland?” Dick continued.       His father said, “Yes, it is, but why are you asking me all these questions?”       Dick answered, “Because when Granny told me all those things while I was with her, I couldn’t understand how we had all met.” Text 3 During the Second World War it was difficult to travel by plane, because the seats were needed for important government and army people.       Mr. Brown worked for the government during the war. He was a civilian, and he was doing very secret work, so nobody was allowed to know how important he was except a very few people.       One day he had to fly to Edinburgh to give a lecture to a few top people there, but an important army officer came to the airport at the last minute, and Mr. Brown’s seat was given to him, so he was not able to fly to the city to give his lecture.       It was not until he reached the city that the important officer discovered that the man whose seat he had taken was the person whose lecture he had flown to the city to hear. Text 4 There is a prison in Ireland which allows its prisoners to go out without any guards to work every day. They work on the farms near the prison during the day, and come back to have their evening meal and to sleep every evening. Before they are allowed to go out like this, they have to promise to come back every evening. If they do not promise this, they are not let out.       One night one of the prisoners was invited to have a meal and a drink with the family he was working for, so he came back to the prison very late. He had to knock at the gate several times before the guard came to let him in.       The guard did not like being disturbed at this time, so he said to the prisoner angrily, “If you come back so late again, I won’t let you in.” [Reference: Sesa, Leonardus (2000) English Workbook, Makassar]