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Tag questions
Why
We use question tags to ask for confirmation. We might expect a person to confirm something that we already think, or be asking a question to confirm something we do not know. We show the difference using a falling or rising intonation on the tag section.
- It's a melon, isn't it?
- You were always late, weren't you?
Positive and negative
When the sentence stem uses a positive form of the main verb, the question tag uses a negative. Vice versa: if the sentence stem uses a negative verb form, the tag will be positive. There are some exceptions, but this is true in most cases.
- She doesn't live there, does she?
- We haven't been here before, have we?
Auxiliary verbs
Question tags can be in any tense. We can change the auxiliary verb and main verb to change the tense. If the tense has no auxiliary verb in the positive (e.g. the present and past simple tenses), add the corresponding correct form of the verb 'do'.
- He runs, doesn't he?
- She ran, didn't she?
- They've run, haven't they?
- You won't eat my melon, will you?
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To do
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