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Let’s learn everything about question tags, shall we?

Surprise your students with some questions about their lives: You speak French, don’t you? You have been to Egypt, haven’t you? You love dogs, don’t you? You didn’t go to London last year, did you?

Explain that question tags, these short questions at the end of our statements, can be used to help us to confirm something. 

✔️ ❌ A positive statement takes a negative question tag. 

❌ ✔️ And a negative statement takes a positive question tag. 

Now your students are ready to understand how to turn statements into questions.

Present the formation of question tags to your students and focus on the exceptions. Your English learners should also understand that question tags are more common in speaking than writing and that’s why it’s important to understand how native speakers actually speak English! Explain that when we are sure (or almost sure) that our statement is correct, we use falling intonation in the question tag. On the other hand, if we are a bit less sure, we use rising intonation.

Now ask students to work in pairs and write some facts they think they know about each other. Allow 4-5 minutes for this step. Once they are ready, ask them to form the question tags, read each sentence aloud and wait for the right answer! If necessary, model the right rising and falling intonation patterns.

💡 tip: Activities like this one that require pair or group work provide a meaningful context for language practice and nurture a culture of collaboration and kindness in your English language classroom.

Another fun idea is to give your students some prompts (write words that are related to your daily life, hobbies and dreams on the board) and embrace the AMA (Ask Me Anything) social media trend! Just let your students ask you anything about your life using the prompts! For example, you could write the word ‘karaoke’ and wait for a student to ask if you actually like karaoke, if you know that karaoke is a Japanese word or if you’ve ever been to a karaoke bar! 

💡 tip: Activities like this one are great ways to create a positive and strong teacher-student relationship.

What do you think? Question tags are fun to teach, aren’t they? Well, you can also tell your students that if they don’t like using question tags, they can just use ‘right’ in informal situations! But you won’t do that, right?