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Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. Today, I want to talk to you about native speaker questions, how
native ask questions. I'm sure you already know how to ask questions in English. That's
just basic stuff. That's baby stuff. But do you know the different phrases that native
speakers use to ask questions and the slightly different grammar? Maybe you don't. Maybe
you don't already know that. That's why I made today's video. So they watching, and
I'm going to explain all about that, how to ask questions like a native speaker.
First things first. You have to learn the question phrases that native speakers will
use when they're asking a question. Here they are. "Could you tell me?" "I wonder." "I wanted
to know." "Do you know?" And "Who knows?" So what you do is you take one of these phrases.
Then, you put the normal question that you're going to ask, but you have to change the order
of the grammar slightly. So here are some examples. Just baby English sentences. You
already know how to make questions like this. Here's the question word. In the middle is
the verb, and in the last position is the object. "Where is he?" "Who is that?" "What
are they?" "When is it?" So what do we do then? Do we just use the
phrase and put this there? No. No, no. That would be too easy. So what we do is we need
to swap. And I'm sorry this is the same colour. It would be really helpful to change the colour
here. So we swap the position of the verb and the object. We have to swap the position
-- excuse me while I put the pen down. And I'm going to put it back here. "Could you
tell me where he is?" Feels a little bit weird at first saying that, doesn't it? Because
it goes against the structure that you're used to. "I wonder who that is. I wonder who
that is." "I wanted to know what they are." "Do you know when it is?" That's part one.
Unfortunately, not all questions are as simple as baby questions when speaking English. Something
that causes quite a bit of confusion is questions in the present and past simple because these
questions are the ones with the "do, did, does" also in the question.
So what we want to know now is how do we fit a question that's the present or the past
simple such as, "When does the lesson start?" This is the present simple form. "When did
they do it?" That's the past simple question form. And "What do you do?" That's the present
simple form again. How do we take these sentences and fit them with our phrases for asking questions?
Well, it's actually not that hard because you can take out the "does, did, do". You
have to forget about them. You don't need them. So in one sense, it makes it easier.
But you do sometimes have to pay attention to the verb conjugation. So let's have a look.
"Could you tell" -- oh, I need to -- what am I doing? I need to show you that we're
removing those. Also in the blue pen. I'm sorry about the blue pen. I don't have any
other pens at the moment. "Could you tell me when the lesson start." You can't say that.
"Could you tell me when the lesson start." This is what I mean about verb conjugation.
You have to say "when the lesson starts". Back to the pen, and it's going to be a very
small S because there's no space. Why am I making so many excuses today? It's a blue
pen. That's what you're getting. So here you go. "I wonder how they do it." This one is
the present simple. We can keep it like that if we're still talking about the present simple.
If we want to talk about the past, we can say, "I wonder how they did it."
The next example, "I wanted to know what do you do?" This is fine, also. Let's move this
down for the other examples. So when the question phrase has "you" in it, as subject, you might
need to change the rest of the question. "Do you know how they do it?" Well, not for that
one. "Do you know when the lesson starts?" That's another example. The same way that
we needed to change this with the S because of "you" here, we need to change here also.
"Do you know when the lesson starts?" And let's do one more example, "Who knows
what you do?" That would almost be rude. Now, we're ready to go to the final stage
of asking questions like a native speaker. What you do is you take one of the phrases,
and then you use "if" or "whether". It's in orange. Can you squint to see it? "If" or
"whether". And then, we take a question, but these questions are different because there
is no question word like "what", "when", "why", "how". We don't have those question words.
And we don't have "did", "does", "do". We don't have those question words either.
Here are some examples. "Is it expensive?" "Have they got a car?" And "Can I have a cake?"
So then, we put all the pieces together using "if" or "whether". "If" or "whether" basically
mean the same thing. "Whether" is a little bit more British English, I would say, or
possibly more British English, plus more formal. "Could you tell me whether it is expensive?"
Ah-ha! Ah-ha! So we have to swap again. We have to swap the position of the verb. So
notice how the position of "is" has changed. It's not at the beginning of the question
anymore over here. "Could you tell me whether it is expensive?" "I wonder if they have got
a car." "I wanted to know whether I can have a cake." Let's do two more. "Do you know if
it is expensive?" "Who knows if they have a car."
Asking questions like a native speaker. You need to practise it a bit because your mind
is used to saying the sentence structure in a fixed way. So it's a little bit tricky to
do at first. But with practice and patience, you can ask questions like a native speaker.
Thank you so much for watching today. I want to invite you please, invite you, encourage
you, love you -- love you? I would love you. I would love you to come and join my mailing
list. I have a growing family of people on my mailing list. And I'm in touch a couple
of times a week with my personal coaching emails. So I write to you about something
motivational, or I share something with you. So why not join me like all the other people?
I would appreciate it so much. Come back again soon to my channel where I have videos about
English, communication, introvert things -- all things, really, on my channel. So until next
time, see you. Bye-bye.