Expressing the right messages in the form of questions can be quite a challenging task. See the following familiar question words to improve your skills in making good questions.
But what is a question word? A question word is the word used to ask a question. In communication, we often need to know different kinds of information. These different types of information can be gained by using different question words.
So, question words determine the type of information we need. They are generally located at the beginning of a sentence. When writing, you must punctuate this sentence with a question mark so that our communication can take place well or our intention can be easily understood.
There are only a few question words in English such as: what, who, whom, whose, where, when, why, which, and how. Some of these basic question words can be supplemented with certain words to make it work. For example, you can say: ‘how much’, ‘how many’, ‘how long’, ‘how high’, ‘how deep’, ‘how tall’, ‘how old’, ‘how soon’.
See the following question words with each functions.
What is used to ask about a thing or a noun in general.
Examples:
What is your name?
What’s going on?
What are you doing?
Who is used to ask about a person (as a subject in a sentence).
Examples:
Who is that?
Who are you?
Who called you last night?
Whom is used to ask about a person (as an object in a sentence).
Examples:
Whom did you call last night?
Whom do you work with?
Whom do you live with?
Where is used to ask about a location.
Examples:
Where are you from?
Where were you born?
Where are you going?
When is used to ask about the time, such as year, month, date, day, part of the day etc.
Examples:
When were you born?
When’s your birthday?
When are you coming back?
Why is used to ask about a reason or a purpose.
Examples:
Why do you love me?
Why are you here?
Why is the girl crying?
How is used to ask about the condition, the way something is done. How is often used with another word such as much, many, tall, high, big, old, etc. to ask about the size, the amount, the number, the price, the height, etc.
Examples:
How are you?
How do you go to school?
How tall are you?
How much do you weigh?
How many books do you need?
| Question Word | Auxiliary | Subject | Verb |
| What, Who, Whom, Where, When, Why, How | do, does, did, are, is, am, was, were | I, you, they, we, he, she, it | verb I or verb ing? |
When asking about the subject, the question word is followed by the verb.
Examples:
In formal situation or in writing, we sometimes use preposition before the question word when we make a question.
See the following examples:
See Active and Passive Voice Exercises here.
Complete the following questions with the correct auxiliary.
Complete the following sentences with the correct question word .
Ask and answer with your friend.
You: Where does your father work?
Your friend: He works in the office/ in his farm/ in Manokwari.
Various answers are possible.
Adjectives Ending in Ing and Ed
Question Tags Exercises with Answers
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