Section 4 — Your Voice Grammar focus

Session 15 Grammar: Question tags and follow-up questions

The grammar of conversational engagement — the structures that keep a discussion alive, invite others in, and signal that you are genuinely listening.

Grammar Focus

Statement + question tag ("isn't it?", "don't you think?", "wouldn't you say?") / Follow-up: "What do you mean by...?" / "Can you elaborate on...?" / "What's your view on...?"

Question tags are short questions added to the end of a statement, inviting confirmation or opening the floor to disagreement. They are one of the most distinctively English conversational tools — and one of the most important for sounding natural in discussion. The grammatical rule: if the main clause is positive, the tag is negative; if the main clause is negative, the tag is positive. The auxiliary verb in the tag matches the main verb.

Follow-up questions serve a different purpose: they signal genuine engagement and invite the other speaker to develop their point. "What do you mean by...?" asks for clarification; "Can you elaborate on...?" invites expansion; "What's your view on...?" opens a new dimension of the topic. Together, question tags and follow-up questions are the grammar of active, curious listening.

"The coverage has been pretty one-sided, hasn't it?" (positive statement → negative tag; falling intonation = seeking agreement)

"You'd agree that the situation is more complicated than the headlines suggest, wouldn't you?" ('wouldn't you' — invites the other person to confirm or push back)

"It's hard to know what to make of this story, don't you think?" ('don't you think' — softer tag, genuinely open to the other view)

"What do you mean by 'the media is biased'? Biased in which direction, and toward what?" (follow-up that asks for precision — challenges a vague claim constructively)

"Can you elaborate on what you said about the methodology? I want to make sure I've understood the concern." (follow-up that signals careful listening and invites development)

"What's your view on how this story should have been covered differently?" (open follow-up that invites the speaker to move from criticism to constructive analysis)

Variations to practice

The story has been badly reported, hasn't it? / It hasn't been reported fairly, has it? You'd say the framing matters as much as the facts, wouldn't you? It's not as simple as the headline makes it sound, is it? What do you mean by that exactly — can you give me an example? Can you elaborate on why you think that source is unreliable? What's your view on how we should be reading this kind of story?