Name: Tricky English Question Structures: Tag Questions, “Do you mind?”, “Are you in?”...
Uploaded: 2025-07-26T18:17:57.000Z
Duration: 11 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In today's video, I have a very, very important lesson for you.

And the reason I say that is because we're going to look at some questions that especially for beginner and even intermediate students have a very difficult time trying to answer.

And it's not because they don't understand the question.

The problem most of the time is they don't know how to structure the answer in relation to the question.

You'll understand more when I show you the types of questions we're looking at.

Now, for native speakers, they're not tricky, they're just natural questions.

For English learners, they can be very tricky.

So, we're going to start with tag questions.

The way they are built is you have basically an expression or a statement followed by a short question, a yes-no question.

Now, you'll notice that I have a positive verb and a negative verb, or I have a negative verb and a positive verb.

So, I'm not going to focus too much about the tags now, I want to just show you how to answer this question every time.

The key is to basically understand what are you being asked.

So, if you look at both of these questions, try to make it a very simple, straightforward question, like.

So, the question actually is, do you like pizza?

That's the actual question you're being asked.

If I say it like this, this is the meaning.

If I say it like this, this is still the meaning.

So, it doesn't matter how the tag is structured, the meaning of the question does not change.

So, it's very important to understand what the meaning of the question is, not the structure of the question.

So, it doesn't matter what you want to say, however, you would answer this question, answer this question, these questions as well.

Yes doesn't mean I agree with a don't like, it means yes, I do.

Now, if you're not entirely sure that the person will understand you with the negative, just stress the positive verb.

So, the answer doesn't change depending on the question.

The answer will always be the same because this is the actual question that you're answering, right?

So, don't be afraid to just simply answer yes or no, regardless of how the question was structured, as long as you actually understand what you're being asked, right?

I can change the question many times, the answer will always stay the same.

I have a lot of students and you ask them, you like pizza, don't you?

Like, they get a little bit confused because they're not sure, do they answer this verb or do they answer this verb?

Answer the meaning of the question, not the two verbs inside of it.

I hope that's a little bit clear, because I know this is a very confusing question type.

Would you mind if... or do you mind if...

Now, you have to remember, this word, mind, is a verb.

If you mind something, if you mind someone doing something, you're against them doing it.

So, yes to this question means don't do whatever the...

Yes, I'm saving it for my friend who's coming soon.

So, you can always say why your answer is yes or no, but a lot of people say, do you mind if I smoke?

No, I don't mind means go ahead and smoke, but it means...

But what you're actually thinking is no, don't smoke.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Tricky English Question Structures: Tag Questions, “Do you mind?”, “Are you in?”...

pretend

situation

expression

basically