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I. Questions asked with the help of 'to do'
II. Questions asked without the help of 'to do'
Ad I: Questions with 'to do'
You need 'to do' only in questions which are connected with the present and past tenses.
Thus turning an affirmative sentence (Aussagesatz) into a question is done as follows:
|
They |
like |
reading short stories. |
Do |
they |
like |
reading short stories? |
|
They |
liked |
swimming in the sea. |
Did |
they |
like |
swimming in the sea? |
|
She |
goes |
shopping every day. |
Does |
she |
go |
shopping every day? |
|
She |
went |
to see her friend in England. |
Did |
she |
go |
to see her friend in England? |
From above questions you can generally conclude:
1. You simply place 'to do' in front of the affirmative sentence.
2. If you use 'did' or 'does', you drop the -ed or the -s from the main verb.
If you ask questions concerning place (where?), time (when?), reason (why?), manner (how?) or the object (whom?),
you simply put these conjunctions in front of the yes/no-questions, e.g.:
Where |
did |
they |
like |
swimming? (place) |
Who(m) |
did |
she |
go |
to see in England? (object) |
Ad II: Questions without 'to do'
But look out! Whenever you ask a question concerning the subject of a sentence
(who? with people / what? with things), you must not use 'to do', e.g.:
Who |
went |
to see her friend in England? (subject) |
What |
washes |
the clothes? (subject) |
Whenever questions are used in the progressive(continuous) forms (=-ing-forms) or in all tenses
except for the present and past tenses or whenever there is a modal verb like must or can, you
do not use 'to do', e.g.:
Is he reading a novel? |
Has he read a lot? |
Would you like to travel to London? |
Can he swim? |
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