How to Use Tag Questions

Teacher: Lai Muhammed is the Minister of Information, isn’t it?

Students: Yes it is.

Teacher: Abu, you were not in school yesterday, isn’t it?

Abu: Yes, it is.

Hello lovers of English grammar. Welcome. Today, I will talk on the topic of question tag. A question tag is a yes or no question that is asked immediately after a statement. It is used to change a statement into a question.

As you can see from the conversations above, the question tag poses a lot of problems to some people. These problems arise as a result of the fact that most people are oblivious of the fact that there are rules that guide its use. People often fall into the trap of using “isn’t it” as a question tag for every statement they make. In the first example, the teacher is guilty of that.  If you will spare time to read this post to the end, you will, no doubt, be happy that you have, indeed, learnt something. Before I continue, I want you to take a second look at the conversations between the teacher and the students above. Well, I want to believe you have done that. Alright, what did you notice? Did you notice any error at all? Of course, there are errors. Now, explore the following rules of question tags and discover those errors by yourself. I tell you, you can do it. Ok, let’s go.

1.     When you make a positive statement, use a negative tag question. This, again, is followed by a positive response. So, it is Positive-Negative-Positive.

Examples

·        The King has spoken, hasn’t he?

      Yes, he has.

·        She went to Kaduna last month, didn’t she?

           Yes, she did.

Please note that a positive statement does not have “not” while a negative statement has. In the above examples, “the King has spoken” and “she went to Kaduna last month” are positive statements while “hasn’t he?” and “didn’t she?” are negative statements. “Hasn’t” and “didn’t” means “has not” and “did not” respectively. Note that “yes, he has” and “yes, she did” are positive response.

2.     Also, when you make a negative statement, use a positive tag question. This must be followed by a negative response. The order is: Negative-Positive-Negative.

Examples

·        The King has not spoken, has he?

No, he hasn’t.

·        She did not go to Kaduna last month, did she?

No, she didn’t.

As can be seen above, “the King has not spoken” and “she did not go to Kaduna last month” are negative statements which are followed by the positive tags, “has he?” and “did she?” respectively. Remember, “no, he hasn’t” and “no she didn’t” are negative response.

3.     Whenever you use any auxiliary verb (i.e. helping verb) in the statement, make sure you repeat the same auxiliary verb in the tag question.

Examples

·        We have done the work, haven’t we?

           Yes, we have.

·        The boy will not talk, will he?

           No, he won’t.

You can see that the auxiliary verbs “have” and “will” are repeated in the tag questions. That is the rule. Do you still remember our second example in the teacher-student conversation? Don’t worry, let me bring it up:

Teacher: Abu, you were not in school yesterday, isn’t it?

Abu: Yes, it is.

By now, you should have discovered the error in this conversation. You see, the teacher did not repeat the auxiliary verb “were” in the tag question. He should have used “were you?” in the tag question and not “isn’t it?” The same error is also transmitted to the student when he replies “yes, it is.” Have you noticed that rule number 2 is also applied here? “Were not” in the statement is negative and so “were” should be used in the tag question.

4.     When you use a main verb (i.e. lexical verb) in the statement, make sure you replace it with any appropriate “do” verb. Before I give you examples, I want you to take a look at the verbs we call “do” verbs. They are: do, does, doing, did, done. See the examples below.

Examples

·        Tony called you last night, didn’t he?

·        Fatima eats a lot, doesn’t she?

·        They travel every week, don’t they?

I believe you have seen how those main verbs are replaced by their appropriate “do” verb. Here, your knowledge of tenses and number is at play. “Called” in the first example is in the past tense, so it goes with “didn’t” which is also in the past tense. In the second example, “eats” is in the simple present tense due to the singular subject, “Fatima.” So, the appropriate “do” verb for that is “does.” Remember, here I used the negative “doesn’t” because the statement is positive. The same applies to the third example.

5.      Always replace nouns with pronouns in the tag questions. That is to say that whenever you have a noun in the statement, you replace it with a pronoun in the tag question. Let me still take you back to the first example:

Teacher: Lai Muhammed is the Minister of Information, isn’t it?

Students: Yes it is.

What did you notice? Error, right? Good! The teacher should have simply replaced “Lai Muhammed” with “he.” Then the student would have given the correct response, “yes he is.” The correct order is this:

Teacher: Lai Muhammed is the Minister of Information, isn’t he?

Students: Yes he is.

6.     When you have “used to” in the statement, replace it with “did” in the tag question. Remember, “used to” implies past tense, meaning what you talk about is no longer in vogue.

Example

·        She used to smoke, didn’t she?

This statement implies she does not smoke again.

7.     “I am” usually goes with the tag “aren’t I”

Examples

·        I am strong, aren’t I?

·        I am your brother, aren’t I?

Thank you for your patience. I believe your doubts have been cleared. If you are still confused, please ask your questions on the comment section. It is very easy to make comments here when you have a google account or gmail. I’m expecting your comments. My name is Godwin Owojecho. Have a nice day.