Indirect questions

Word order

If we do not begin a question directly, but begin it with something like:
Can you tell me...? Do you know...? I wonder if...? the word order is the same as in an affirmative statement.

Direct question: What is he doing?
Indirect question: Do you know what he is doing?
Direct question: Where have they been?
Indirect question: I wonder where they have been?

Do, does, did

If the direct question contains do, does or did, we omit it in the indirect question.

Direct question: What do you want?
Indirect question: Can you tell me what you want?
Direct question: When did she leave?
Indirect question: Do you know when she left?

Yes/no questions

In yes / no questions, we use if or whether (the word order is the same as in reported questions).

Direct question: Have you seen my dog?
Indirect question: Could you tell me if you have seen my dog?

See also: Questions / Tag questions / Reported questions

Teaching Indirect questions

•   I teach this with the concept of permission.
  - with a direct question the person being questioned has two options: answer the question or ignore it (ignoring it would be impolite)
  - with indirect questions the person being questioned is presented with two parts :
  Can I ask (permission)
  The question
  They have the choice of saying "no you cannot ask" or answering the question - both are polite.
  I use very direct questions when expanding this idea in front of a group.
  How much do you earn ?
  Are you looking for a new job ?
  Who are you dating at the moment ?
  With these questions the student would rather not answer them in front of a group - so has to choose the "no you can't ask" variation.
  Works for me :-) "
  Adrian
  
•   I present this as 'polite commands' -
  
  Rude: Tell me what time it is!
  Polite: I was wondering if you could tell me what time it is?
  
  Rude: Give me a pen!
  Polite: Could you give me a pen?
  
  Rude: Move!
  Polite: Would you be able to move, please?
  
  So lesson is: 1) be rude, 2) what can we say to be polite (Could you, I was wondering if..., etc.,)? 3) now put them together - but DO NOT change the word order of the rude command.
  
  Getting students to transform real questions into indirect questions is very confusing for them - and artificial since the basic underlying sentence is a command, not a question. As such, it does not change. It's best to teach this in isolation from indirect speech since syntactically they are actually completely different things.
  Ben
  

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