Indirect Questions 01 - Sentences for your Grammar! - Useful Language

Indirect Questions (Oral Drill 01)

Listen to this episode at the Talking People Podcast

A direct question involves the use of a question mark and a S + V word order. An indirect question involves no question mark whatsover and then the same word order we would use in affirmative or negative statements (as opposed to questions). Indirect questions are introduced by a reporting sentence like “I can’t remember”, “I don’t know”, “We don’t understand”, “I can’t imagine”...

Where is that street?
Where does he live?

I don’t know where that street is.
I don’t know where he lives.

Sentence 1: Reporting sentence	Sentence 2: Reported Sentence
Sentence 1: Reporting sentence	Link: Interrogative pronoun/adverb (+?)	Subject	Predicate
I don’t know	who	it / she	is
	“who” here is also the subject		is coming
	what	you	mean
		they	said
	“what” here is also the subject		happened
	how	they	did it
		I	got here
	where	I	left my keys
		that street	is
	when	it	starts
		the meeting	is
	why	you	are so upset
		they	didn’t call me
	how many	people	are coming
	how many beers	we	need to get
	how much	it	is
	how much time	we	have left (we’ve got)
	how long	he	is planning to stay
		we	will be away
I can’t remember	who		came
	who	we	met
	what		was going on
	what	we	did that day
	where	we	went that day
	when	we	met
	why	we	argued
	how far	the place	was
	how much	it	was
	how many presents	we	bought
	how often	we	visited that museum
	what	it	was like
	what	my grandpa	was like
	what	Paris	felt like
	what	living there	felt like