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Hello. My name is
Emma, and today, we are
going to look at yes/no
questions. So, there
are six different types
of questions in English.
Today, we will look at a
common type of question,
which is the yes/no
question. Yes/no questions
are answered with yes
or no. Many students
make mistakes with
yes/no questions because
they can be a little
bit confusing, and I'll
show you why. Let's look at some examples.
So, here is a sentence. "She is a teacher."
"Is" is the verb. Now,
if I turn this into a
yes/no question, it
becomes, "Is she a teacher?"
So, you'll notice the "is"
and the "she" switched.
"Is she a teacher?"
"Yes, she is a teacher." Or,
"No, she is not a
teacher." Both of those are
possible answers. Now,
if you look at the next
sentence, "You like
pizza." If we make this into
a question, it becomes,
"Do you like pizza?"
So, wait a second.
"Do you like pizza, but is
she a teacher?" These
are different. They're both
yes/no questions, but
here we have "do", and in
this one, there is no
"do". So, today, I will
explain why for some
yes/no questions we need
"do" or "does", and for
other yes/no questions,
we just do that switch.
Let's look at another
example. "They can
swim." If we want this to be
a yes/no question, it
becomes, "Can they swim?"
So, in this case, "can"
and "they" switch to make
a yes/no question, and
you will notice we have
a question mark, question
mark, question mark,
so we know it's a
question. So, let's find out
when do we switch,
and when do we use "do",
"does", and "did". So,
yes/no questions can
be confusing because
people don't know if they
should use "do" or
"does" or if they should just
switch the verb with
the subject. I'm going to
teach you about three
different types of yes/no
questions to help you
understand this better.
So, we have type 1,
where we're going to talk
about the "be" verb;
type 2, where we're going
to talk about helping
verbs; and type 3, where
we're going to talk
about main verbs, and I'll
explain each of these
to you. Understanding the
different types will
help you create correct
yes/no questions. So, I
have here a statement.
"She is happy." The
first thing you should do
when you're creating a
yes/no question is you can
create a statement,
so this is not a question,
it's like a sentence, and what I'm going
to do is I'm going to think about the verb.
The verb in this case
is "is". "Is" is a "be" verb,
so "be" verbs include
"am", like "I am", "are",
"you are", "she is",
"he is", "it is", "they
are", or "we are". So,
if you see "are" or "is",
you're dealing with
the "be" verb. So, this all
has to do with the "be"
verb. Anytime you have
a statement with "is"
or "are" like this, and
there's no other verb,
so as I said, the verb
type is the "be" verb,
what you do is you switch
the position of the
subject with the "be" verb.
That sounds complicated,
but watch. It's very
easy. "She is happy."
We switch. "Is she happy?"
So, we can call this
"invert", we can call
it "switch". All you
do is you take the "is"
and you put it in front. "She is
happy" becomes "Is she happy?"
So, "be" verbs, you
invert. You switch the
position. Let's look at
some other examples.
So, we have here "Are
you tired?" So, if we wanted
the statement, we
could say, "You are tired."
Okay? So, "are" is a
"be" verb, so the verb
type is a "be" verb, so
that means it's type 1.
And so, that means for type 1 verbs,
we do the switch. "You are tired" becomes
"Are you tired?" And then, of course,
the question mark. Okay. So, very easy,
you just switch for the
"be" verb. Here's another
example. "Are kids
fun?" So, the statement
would be "Kids are fun." "Are" is a "be"
verb. You switch them. "Are kids fun?"
Or imagine I want to know about
your friend. "Your friend is a doctor?"
When we switch, it
turns to the question, "Is
your friend a doctor?"
"Be" verbs are the easiest
because you just switch the subject
with the verb, so the switch is easy.
So, we talked about type 1 "be" verbs and
how you switch them. Let's look at type 2.
Type 2 are helping verbs. I'll show
you what a helping verb is in a moment.
Here is a sentence. "She can come here."
We have "can" which is a helping verb.
It helps the main verb "come". "Can" is
a helping verb. "Come" is the main verb.
So, helping verb, main
verb. So, because there's
a helping verb, we're
calling this type 2,
we will use this. With helping verbs, you
switch the position of the helping verb.
So, "She can come here" becomes "Can she
come here?" So, you take the helping verb
and you move it in front. "Can she come
here?" "Yes, she can." "No, she can't."
So, what are some
other helping verbs? "Will"
is a helping verb. We
can put different helping
verbs here as an example.
"She will come." "She
has come." "She should
come." "She would come."
"She must come." So, these are all helping
verbs. So, when you have a helping verb
like these words, you move the
helping verb in front of the subject.
So, here are some more examples. "Have they
finished?" So, "have" is a helping verb.
Imagine we have the sentence,
we can write, "They have finished."
To turn this into a yes/no
question, we take the
helping verb, "have",
and we move it to the front.
"Have they finished?" And now
we have "Have they finished?"
We can do the same thing with "could".
"Could" is a helping verb. The sentence is,
"You could hurry up."
That's the statement, "You
could hurry up." To make
a question, we switch,
"could" moves to the front and
becomes, "Could you hurry up?"
So, "could" was here, it moves to
the front. So, this is the second type.
One thing that
confuses students is "is".
Because here, I told
you "is" is a "be" verb,
you move it to the
front. "Is" and "are" can
be helping verbs. So,
"She is running." "Is",
in this sentence, is a
helping verb. "Run" is
the main verb. We would
move "is" to the front.
"Is she running?"
So, this "is" is different
because of this verb,
"running". We have a helping
verb, "is", and the main
verb, "run". The good
news is type 1 and type
2 have the same rule.
You just move the "is"
or the helping verb in
front. Now, let's look
at type 3. Type 3 is
different. So, type 3 is main verbs. We do
something different when we're working with
main verbs. Let me
explain. Here is a sentence.
"She likes English."
"Like" is not the "be" verb.
"Like" is not a helping
verb, so it is type
3, main verb. Anything
that is not a "be" verb
or a helping verb falls
into this category. So,
what happens? "She
likes English." We want to
make a yes/no question.
So, what we do for type
3 is we need to add
"do", "does", or "did".
Depending on if we're talking about the
present tense, "do" or "does", or the past,
we can use "did". In
this case, we're talking
about now. "Does"
works with "he" and "she".
"Do" is for "I do",
"you do", "we do", "they
do". So, be careful. If
you use "I", "you", "we",
"they", use "do". If you
use "he", "she", or "it",
use "does". So, what
does the sentence look like
when it's a question?
It becomes "Does",
"Does she like English?"
"She likes English."
"Does she like English?" So,
we did two things. First step,
we added "does", so "Does she", I
can write it up here. Added "does", "she".
Second step, we change
the verb, we take off the "s".
"Does she like
English?" "She does like
English, yes." So, that's
how we make type 3
yes/no questions. It's
different than type 1
and type 2. Let's look
at some other examples.
"Do you play?" So,
imagine the statement is
"you play", "you play".
"Play" is a main verb.
It's not the "be" verb. It's not a
helping verb. "Play" is the main verb.
"Do you play?" We can add "do".
"Do you play?" If it's "he", "he plays",
we can change it to "Does he play?"
Here's another one, "understand".
"Understand" is the main verb. There's
no "be" verb, there's no helping verb,
so we need to add, in this case, we have
"he", so we use "does", we put it in front,
"Does he understand?" And again,
there's nothing, no "s" on "understand".
When we're talking about the past,
it's the same thing, except we use "did".
"Did he understand?" "Does he understand"
is now, "did he understand" is the past,
so we use "did" for the past,
we use "do" or "does" for now.
So, again, main verbs
are every verb that is not
the "be" verb or a verb
that is not a helping
verb. So, every other
verb, "play", "understand",
"listen", "go", these
are all main verbs.
So, the way to understand
yes/no questions is
to think about the
verb. Is it a "be" verb,
is it a helping verb,
or is it a main verb?
Once you know that,
you can create the correct
yes/no question. So,
thank you for watching.
There is a quiz you
can take at our website,
www.engvid.com, to
practice what you learned
today. Yes/no questions
are very important in
English; they are the most common type of
question, so it's important you learn how
to create yes/no questions.
You can check out
our channel and subscribe.
We have many videos
on many topics related
to English, including
on grammar, vocabulary,
writing, listening,
and so much more. So, thank you so much for
listening, and until next time, take care.
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