Guide to English Question Structure – TOEIC® Preparation

In English, asking a question follows strict structural rules. Unlike declarative sentences, the placement of the auxiliary verb and the subject is inverted. We identify four main categories of questions:

• Closed questions (Yes/No questions)
• Open questions (Wh- questions)
• Tag questions
• Indirect questions

Before exploring these mechanisms in detail, keep this fundamental distinction in mind:

• Some questions require a binary answer of "Yes" or "No" (closed questions)
• Other questions request specific information (open questions with Wh-)

1. Fundamentals of Interrogative Construction

A. The Role of Auxiliary Verbs

The majority of interrogative structures require an auxiliary verb (do, does, did, have, will, can, etc.) positioned at the beginning of the sentence or immediately after the question word.

• Auxiliary "do" (simple present) or "does" (simple present, 3rd person singular)
  • Do you enjoy reading? (Aimes-tu lire ?)
  • Does he speak Spanish? (Parle-t-il espagnol ?)
• Auxiliary "did" (simple past)
  • Did you attend the conference yesterday? (As-tu assisté à la conférence hier ?)
• Auxiliary "have/has" (present perfect and past perfect)
  • Have they completed the assignment? (Ont-ils terminé le devoir ?)
  • Has she visited Paris before? (A-t-elle déjà visité Paris ?)
• Auxiliary "will" (simple future)
  • Will they join us for dinner? (Nous rejoindront-ils pour dîner ?)

B. Question Words

Question words (Wh- words) allow you to inquire about specific elements: place, time, cause, manner, or identity. They open the question and guide the nature of the expected answer.

Here are the main question words:

Important notes:

• Who is commonly used in all registers, while whom remains confined to formal or literary use.
• How combines with many terms (much, many, long, often, far, old) to specify the aspect being questioned (quantity, duration, distance, frequency, age).

2. Closed Questions (Yes/No questions)

Closed questions start with the auxiliary verb, followed by the subject, then the main verb. Notable exception: the verb "be" used as the main verb does not require an additional auxiliary.

Typical Structure:

(Auxiliary) + (Subject) + (Main verb + complement) ?

Examples:

• Are you available this afternoon? → Yes, I am.
• Do you speak French? → Yes, I do.
• Did they approve the proposal? → Yes, they did.
• Have you received my message? → Yes, I have.
• Will she attend the seminar? → Yes, she will.

They are called "closed" because they limit the possible answers: essentially "yes" or "no", sometimes accompanied by details. Unlike open questions, which generate an infinite number of potential answers, closed questions restrict the scope of responses.

Particularity of the verb "be"

When "be" constitutes the main verb, the auxiliaries "do/does/did" are not added:

• Is she your colleague? (subject "she", verb "is")
• Were you at the office yesterday? (subject "you", verb "were")

3. Open Questions (Wh- questions)

Open questions adopt a structure similar to closed questions, but they begin with a question word (Wh-).

Typical Structure:

(Wh- question word) + (Auxiliary) + (Subject) + (Main verb + complement) ?

Examples:

• What did you discuss during the meeting?
• When will the results be published?
• Where are they staying?
• Why did she cancel the appointment?

Who, What and Which: Subject or Object?

The interrogatives who, what, and which can function as either the subject or the object. The sentence construction varies depending on their grammatical role.

When the Question Word is the Subject

In this configuration, the question word directly replaces the agent performing the action. The sentence maintains the order of an affirmative sentence, without the do/does/did auxiliary.

Examples:

• Who sent this document? (Someone sent the document, but we don't know who.)
• What caused the delay? (Something caused the delay, but we don't know what.)
• Which team won the championship? (A team won, but we don't know which one.)

We observe the absence of the auxiliary "did" because the question word directly represents the grammatical subject.

Verification Tip: To identify if the question word is the subject, replace it with he/she/it.Who sent this? → He sent this. ✅ (who = subject)What broke? → It broke. ✅ (what = subject)

When the Question Word is the Object

Here, the question word refers to the person or item receiving the action. An auxiliary verb (do/does/did) is then added to respect the standard interrogative order.

Examples:

• Who did you invite? (You invited someone, but we don't know who.)
• What does she recommend? (She recommends something, but we don't know what.)
• Which solution did they select? (They selected a solution, but we don't know which one.)

4. Tag Questions

Tag questions are used to seek confirmation or verify agreement from your interlocutor. These short interrogative phrases are placed at the end of the statement.

The main objective is to obtain validation or agreement (Yes, I am. / No, I'm not., etc.).

Examples:

• She's joining us tonight, isn't she?
• They haven't submitted the report yet, have they?
• You can handle this task, can't you?
• We've met before, haven't we?

To construct a tag question, you repeat the auxiliary verb or the verb "be", inverting it with the subject. The tag question is negative if the main statement is affirmative, and affirmative if the main statement is negative.

Rules:

• Affirmative statement → negative tag question
  • You work here, don't you?
• Negative statement → affirmative tag question
  • You don't work here, do you?

5. Indirect Questions

Indirect questions are frequently used to soften a request or to formulate a question in a polite manner. They generally appear after introductory phrases such as Could you tell me…, Do you know…, I wonder…, I'd like to know…, etc.

Unlike direct questions, indirect questions do not feature subject-auxiliary inversion. A question mark is not used in the subordinate clause. The question word (Wh-) remains, but the structure follows that of a declarative sentence.

Typical Structure:

Introductory phrase + (question word) + (subject) + (verb) + (complement) ?

Transformation Examples:

• Direct question: Where is the nearest subway station?Indirect question: Could you tell me where the nearest subway station is?
• Direct question: When does the training session begin?Indirect question: Do you know when the training session begins?
• Direct question: Why did he decline the offer?Indirect question: I wonder why he declined the offer.

Key Point: In indirect questions, the verb follows the affirmative sentence order. For example, in Could you tell me where the station is?, we observe that "is" follows "station" directly (subject + verb), without inversion.

• 🔗 The complete TOEIC® grammar guide - in-depth course

Conclusion

This chapter is a fundamental pillar for succeeding in the TOEIC®, as it allows for the correct understanding and analysis of Wh- questions in the Listening Part 2 and Reading Parts 5 & 6 sections. Furthermore, it facilitates the structural analysis of sentences in Reading Part 7 to quickly identify key information.

Your turn!Some superpowers of the FlowExam platform:

• 150 exclusive tips from the experience of over 200 candidates who scored over 950 on the TOEIC®: clear, concrete, tested, and validated in the field.
• Automatic analysis of your most penalizing errors to practice where you lose the most points, without wasting energy.
• Intelligent training system that adapts exercises to your profile and makes you progress faster, without going in circles.
• Flashcards automatically generated from your own mistakes, and optimized by the J method (spaced repetition) for lasting memorization and zero forgetting.
• Personalized learning path, built from your results, to save you time and take you directly towards the quick +X points.