5 ways to ask questions like a native speaker

0:00Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. Today, I want to talk to you about native speaker questions, how
0:06native ask questions. I'm sure you already know how to ask questions in English. That's
0:14just basic stuff. That's baby stuff. But do you know the different phrases that native
0:21speakers use to ask questions and the slightly different grammar? Maybe you don't. Maybe
0:27you don't already know that. That's why I made today's video. So they watching, and
0:32I'm going to explain all about that, how to ask questions like a native speaker.
0:40First things first. You have to learn the question phrases that native speakers will
0:49use when they're asking a question. Here they are. "Could you tell me?" "I wonder." "I wanted
0:55to know." "Do you know?" And "Who knows?" So what you do is you take one of these phrases.
1:05Then, you put the normal question that you're going to ask, but you have to change the order
1:13of the grammar slightly. So here are some examples. Just baby English sentences. You
1:19already know how to make questions like this. Here's the question word. In the middle is
1:25the verb, and in the last position is the object. "Where is he?" "Who is that?" "What
1:32are they?" "When is it?" So what do we do then? Do we just use the
1:37phrase and put this there? No. No, no. That would be too easy. So what we do is we need
1:48to swap. And I'm sorry this is the same colour. It would be really helpful to change the colour
1:55here. So we swap the position of the verb and the object. We have to swap the position
2:04-- excuse me while I put the pen down. And I'm going to put it back here. "Could you
2:10tell me where he is?" Feels a little bit weird at first saying that, doesn't it? Because
2:18it goes against the structure that you're used to. "I wonder who that is. I wonder who
2:25that is." "I wanted to know what they are." "Do you know when it is?" That's part one.
2:38Unfortunately, not all questions are as simple as baby questions when speaking English. Something
2:44that causes quite a bit of confusion is questions in the present and past simple because these
2:52questions are the ones with the "do, did, does" also in the question.
2:59So what we want to know now is how do we fit a question that's the present or the past
3:06simple such as, "When does the lesson start?" This is the present simple form. "When did
3:15they do it?" That's the past simple question form. And "What do you do?" That's the present
3:20simple form again. How do we take these sentences and fit them with our phrases for asking questions?
3:31Well, it's actually not that hard because you can take out the "does, did, do". You
3:41have to forget about them. You don't need them. So in one sense, it makes it easier.
3:45But you do sometimes have to pay attention to the verb conjugation. So let's have a look.
3:53"Could you tell" -- oh, I need to -- what am I doing? I need to show you that we're
3:57removing those. Also in the blue pen. I'm sorry about the blue pen. I don't have any
4:04other pens at the moment. "Could you tell me when the lesson start." You can't say that.
4:13"Could you tell me when the lesson start." This is what I mean about verb conjugation.
4:18You have to say "when the lesson starts". Back to the pen, and it's going to be a very
4:25small S because there's no space. Why am I making so many excuses today? It's a blue
4:31pen. That's what you're getting. So here you go. "I wonder how they do it." This one is
4:41the present simple. We can keep it like that if we're still talking about the present simple.
4:48If we want to talk about the past, we can say, "I wonder how they did it."
4:53The next example, "I wanted to know what do you do?" This is fine, also. Let's move this
5:01down for the other examples. So when the question phrase has "you" in it, as subject, you might
5:09need to change the rest of the question. "Do you know how they do it?" Well, not for that
5:18one. "Do you know when the lesson starts?" That's another example. The same way that
5:24we needed to change this with the S because of "you" here, we need to change here also.
5:32"Do you know when the lesson starts?" And let's do one more example, "Who knows
5:42what you do?" That would almost be rude. Now, we're ready to go to the final stage
5:47of asking questions like a native speaker. What you do is you take one of the phrases,
5:53and then you use "if" or "whether". It's in orange. Can you squint to see it? "If" or
6:02"whether". And then, we take a question, but these questions are different because there
6:08is no question word like "what", "when", "why", "how". We don't have those question words.
6:17And we don't have "did", "does", "do". We don't have those question words either.
6:23Here are some examples. "Is it expensive?" "Have they got a car?" And "Can I have a cake?"
6:32So then, we put all the pieces together using "if" or "whether". "If" or "whether" basically
6:40mean the same thing. "Whether" is a little bit more British English, I would say, or
6:46possibly more British English, plus more formal. "Could you tell me whether it is expensive?"
6:55Ah-ha! Ah-ha! So we have to swap again. We have to swap the position of the verb. So
7:06notice how the position of "is" has changed. It's not at the beginning of the question
7:13anymore over here. "Could you tell me whether it is expensive?" "I wonder if they have got
7:25a car." "I wanted to know whether I can have a cake." Let's do two more. "Do you know if
7:38it is expensive?" "Who knows if they have a car."
7:49Asking questions like a native speaker. You need to practise it a bit because your mind
7:59is used to saying the sentence structure in a fixed way. So it's a little bit tricky to
8:06do at first. But with practice and patience, you can ask questions like a native speaker.
8:13Thank you so much for watching today. I want to invite you please, invite you, encourage
8:20you, love you -- love you? I would love you. I would love you to come and join my mailing
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8:48I would appreciate it so much. Come back again soon to my channel where I have videos about
8:54English, communication, introvert things -- all things, really, on my channel. So until next
9:03time, see you. Bye-bye.