Grammar: Clause: Using clauses to interact

Tag questions

The form of tag questions

Non-native speakers of English often have difficulty with the form of tag questions, so it is useful to spend some time familiarising yourself with how they work before introducing them to your students. Actually we go into more detail here than you need to in the classroom. You might like to think of this as useful background information!

Let's start off with a simple example of a tag question. Note that a tag question is made up of a Statement followed by a tag:

They are at home today, aren't they?
              Statement                           tag

Reversing the Subject and Finite

The tag consists of two elements: the Finite and the Subject :

What is happening here is that the Subject and Finite verb of the Statement are picked up in the tag. Note that they are reversed in the tag:

If the Subject is a content word (children, dogs, books), then the Subject in the tag always uses the appropriate pronoun:

The children are at home today, aren't  they?
       Subject                                                          Subject

Positive and negative

Note that if the clause is positive, then the tag is negative, and vice versa:

Example 1 - Positive Statement and negative tag

Example 2 - Negative clause and positive tag

In this example the clause is negative and the tag is positive:

Changes with the finite verb

When the finite verb is an auxiliary in the Statement, then this auxiliary is repeated in the tag:

Now consider the following example of a tag question where the main clause does not contain an auxiliary verb. In this case the main or 'lexical' verb is also the finite verb:

The children like bananas, don't they?
                      finite verb  

When we add the tag, we need a finite verb (and we can't use like). Therefore, we use the auxiliary verb do as the finite verb in the tag:

Here are some more examples where we need to use the auxiliary verb do in the tag:

Dogs need a lot of attention, don't they?
Bozo finished his homework quickly, didn't he?
Miss Lee teaches English, doesn't she?
Grandpa knows a lot about computers, doesn't he?

For information about some of the problems that students have when forming tag questions, click here:

Note that the terms Subject, Finite and Statement are written with a capital to remind us that they are functional terms.