Question Words & Question Forms

We use question words (also called wh- words) to ask for specific information instead of just 'yes' or 'no': 'who' asks about a person (Who is your teacher?), 'what' asks about a thing (What is this?), 'where' asks about a place (Where do you live?), 'when' asks about a time (When does the film start?), 'why' asks about a reason (Why are you late?) and 'how' asks about the way or manner (How do you go to school? - By bus). We use 'how many' before countable nouns (How many books do you have?) and 'how much' before uncountable nouns (How much water is there?). In most questions the word order is: question word + auxiliary (do/does/did or be) + subject + main verb (Where does she work? When did you arrive?), and we choose 'do/does' for the present and 'did' for the past, always keeping the main verb in its base form. When the question word is the subject of the sentence, we do NOT use do/does/did and we keep normal word order (Who broke the window? - Tom broke it), but when it is the object we need the auxiliary (Who did you see?). We often answer with short answers (Yes, I do / No, she doesn't) or with the exact information asked for. For example: 'How many students are there in your class, and where do they sit?'