Questions and negation
In reading, questions earn almost nothing: exam texts are articles and reports, and they rarely ask the reader anything. The do-support that builds a question also builds every negation, though, and that machinery turns up in the gaps and in editing.
Negation is everywhere by comparison, and it is paid for in reading: a negative word in the text or in the statement is exactly what true/false turns on. Questions collect in one place: your own writing. The writing task asks you to "Include a range of interactive elements to engage your readers", and the text-type characteristics in the exam format name questions and tag questions among those elements.
So there is no chapter on question types here. There are items from the places where these two mechanisms earn or cost marks, and the rule arrives at the point where you trip over it.
The item that brought you here
You most likely came from an open gap, from the question of where the auxiliary (a function word
such as did or has) moves to the front and where it does not. Write one word in each.
The difference between the two gaps is not one of meaning. It is whether the predicate has a function word of its own and whether the question is still a question. Both mechanisms rest on the same piece of English machinery, and it is worth taking apart whole.
The rule and the table
An auxiliary is a function word such as is, has, will, can that stands in front of the
main verb. The plain auxiliaries do, be and have carry no meaning of their own: they show tense
and number. A modal such as will or can adds a meaning of its own (future, ability) and takes
the same position. English builds
questions and negation on it rather than on the main verb. Negation is not immediately after it:
has not answered, will not return. A question is that same word moved in front of the subject:
Has the council answered?
With no auxiliary of its own, English hires one. That is do-support: The council answered has
no function word at all, so do, does or did takes the empty position: The council did not answer, Did the council answer? The tense moves into did completely and the main verb returns
to its base form: did not answer, never did not answered. German sends the main verb itself to
the front (Antwortete der Rat?) and Russian can ask with intonation alone, so the hired word feels
like an extra one and gets dropped or doubled.
The verb be as a predicate hires nobody. In The stairs are not safe and Was the depot told? a do would be redundant, because be is its own function word.
A negative word is not only not. Never, no, nothing, nobody, hardly, rarely,
no longer, without, fail to make a sentence negative just as thoroughly, and a large share of
the negations in exam texts manage without the word not. When reading, you are looking for the
meaning, not for the word.
One negation per clause (a clause is a part of the sentence with its own verb, main or dependent, such as because it was late). A second does not strengthen the first, it breaks the clause: after a
negation English uses any, anything, ever: did not get any answer, not did not get no answer.
Build do-support with your own hands: in the top row the predicate has a function word of its own, in the two below it does not.
| Present | Past | |
|---|---|---|
| Has a function word: it ___ not working | is | |
| Has none, negation: it ___ not work | did | |
| Has none, question: ___ it work? | does |
The rule has been read. It is now tested where it earns marks, and that starts not with the question but with negation: in reading, where the form decides nothing and the meaning decides everything.
Negation in reading
This is a practice text, not an exam text. In the exam the true/false text is a full article, several times longer than what follows. It is short here on purpose: while you are working out the mechanism itself, a long text is only in the way. It does not train the job of holding the thread while you hunt for the one sentence among thirty; that is what the trainer is for.
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Exam levelUntil March the number 9 bus ran through Auberg until midnight. The council cut the last two departures, and hardly anyone objected at the time. Nobody at the depot was told before the new timetable went up. "We learned about it from a passenger," one driver said. The village shop closes at six, so the change made no difference to shoppers. It made a great deal of difference to the night shift at the paper mill. After the evening departures had gone, the mill began paying for a minibus of its own. The minibus does not stop anywhere except the mill gate. Two of the drivers say they have never used it. The council has not answered the letter the mill sent in June. Ninety residents signed a petition, and the bus has not returned. Auberg is not the only village on that line without an evening service.
Statement
The depot staff were told about the new timetable before it went up.
The negation was not where it was being looked for, and it did not look the way it was expected to. The next item is built the other way round: there the negation is in plain sight, inside the statement itself.
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Exam levelUntil March the number 9 bus ran through Auberg until midnight. The council cut the last two departures, and hardly anyone objected at the time. Nobody at the depot was told before the new timetable went up. "We learned about it from a passenger," one driver said. The village shop closes at six, so the change made no difference to shoppers. It made a great deal of difference to the night shift at the paper mill. After the evening departures had gone, the mill began paying for a minibus of its own. The minibus does not stop anywhere except the mill gate. Two of the drivers say they have never used it. The council has not answered the letter the mill sent in June. Ninety residents signed a petition, and the bus has not returned. Auberg is not the only village on that line without an evening service.
Statement
Two of the drivers have not used the minibus.
Deciding by the look of the statement costs you exactly such items. Sometimes, though, exactly one word has been turned over, and that word is what you have to find.
Click the one word of the statement that the passage contradicts.
Above exam levelOne word. Nothing marked yet.
The council has not answered the letter the mill sent in June.
Statement
One word decided the item. In the four-option task negation works just as quietly, except that this time it sits in the options rather than in the text.
The mill began paying for its own minibus
Exam levelNegation in the gaps
In the open cloze a negative word or a hired did is the key only now and then, but those are
exactly the gaps where nothing fits except a single function word. Write one in each.
You closed the gap with one word. Now negation gives way to the question, and where a question really earns a mark, the marks come for writing, not for reading.
Questions in your own writing
In the blog comment a question stops being a rarity and becomes a requirement. The task says
"Include a range of interactive elements to engage your readers", and the text-type characteristics on p. 16 list
what counts as such an element: addressing the reader directly, the pronoun you, questions, tag
questions and an invitation to reply. A tag question is the short addition such as isn't it?
or did they?: it repeats the function word of its sentence and flips the sign. Reading texts
hardly ever use one; in your own text it is one of the few ways to earn the mark for engaging a
reader.
Language accuracy is worth up to five of the twenty marks in this task, and a wrongly built question is visible to the marker at once. Three decisions follow, the kind you make while writing.
Which sentence do you keep in your text?
Exam levelYou have asked the question. A tag question is made of the same two parts, but it takes them from the sentence already written rather than building them afresh.
You have written: The council never asked us. Which tag fits it?
Above exam levelThe tag is in place. The last decision is no longer about questions: it is about how negation behaves inside an ordinary sentence you are writing yourself.
Which sentence do you keep in your text?
Exam levelWhat to take away
| What negation is built on | the function word, not the main verb |
| When there is no function word | do/does/did is hired, the verb goes into the base form |
| Where the tense goes | into did; did not answered marks the past twice |
be as the predicate | hires no do: The stairs are not safe |
| Negative words | never, no, nothing, nobody, hardly, no longer, without |
| Negations per clause | one; after it any, anything, ever |
| A negation in the statement | says nothing about the verdict by itself |
| A question to the reader in writing | the task asks for interactive elements; the tag repeats the function word and flips the sign |
Three places where this earns or costs marks:
True / false + justification: there the negation usually sits in the text, not in the statement Blog comment: there the task itself requires a question to the reader Word order: where a question ends and the function word goes backWas this article helpful?