Elephant English

Hi guys,

This is important.

I’m seeing a lot of people struggling with question formation.

Pam Evans commented about this in response to a recent post, I wrote about it a couple of months back, and I thought it was worth posting as its own topic.

Let’s fix this, once and for all!

In a nutshell, if you are a Spanish speaker and you want to say: “Alguien tiene…?” or “Alguien sabe…?” this is how you start these questions.

DOES ANYBODY HAVE…?
DOES ANYONE KNOW…?

DO ANY OF YOU HAVE…?
DO ANY OF YOU KNOW…?

Here are some recent examples, with corrections below. I’ve marked incorrect questions with an asterisk.

1. *Someone has the vocabulary book for B2?
>>> Does anybody have the vocabulary book for B2?

2. *Somebody knows some website to watch series with subtitles in English?
>>> Does anybody know any websites to watch series with subtitles in English?

3. *Someone knows how I can check my exam when I am practising all the parts except speaking and writing since I can't check them myself.
>>> Does anybody know how I can check my exam…

4.*Anybody have exercises about the passive and the conditionals??
>>> Does anybody have exercises about the passive and the conditionals?

5. *Any of you lives in Peru?
>>> Do any of you live in Peru?

If you are having trouble with Question Formation, I would highly recommend revising this until you "have it down pat." It's basic, it's necessary, and it will plague you for the rest of your English-speaking life if you don't correct it now. The most accessible book is Raymond Murphy's Essential Grammar in Use (A1/A2 - with the red cover).

Units 43-48 offer a good revision of question formation, as do many of the earlier chapters which focus on specific verb tenses. Don't be ashamed of using an A1/A2 book. Use it to "brush up on" question formation, and always double-triple check your questions for the correct word order.

I’ve also uploaded two PDFs to my public folder on Dropbox. These give really clear examples of how to form questions with all the major verb tenses.

You can download my PDFs here. Feel free to share them!

http://bit.ly/1QIKbJO

Question formation Shared with Dropbox