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THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: GRAMMAR: HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS

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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