Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nevermindb]

I've been looking for rules that help dictate when to use "Are" and "Do" but I can't. Can someone help me when you would start a sentence with "Are" and "Do"? Ex: Are you excited? Do you feel happy? I'm looking for a set of rules or something that'll explain this and a whole buncha examples.

[chris_J2]

http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/doormake.htm

http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/verbtobe.html

[suneater]

[GaryCooper]

suneater has a good way of explaining that. Also, any ESL or EFL grammar book will have the rules. I recommend any of the ones you might see in the store if you don't have one.

Yes/No questions fronted with Is/Are or Do are tough for some Korean learners. Korean does all questions with the same basic sentence ending. So "Do chickens have large talons?" and "Are chickens' talons large?" would come out in the same form. The form would look something like "Chickens' talons large question ending?"

Consider also the aspect of the verb. The "Are you seeing Dr. Jones these days?" is be-fronted because it works with the progressive form of the base verb. But in the simple aspect, a question such as "Do you see Dr. Jones?" or "Did you see Dr. Jones?" may make it more complex.

If neither a book nor suneater are handy, you can often think out the topic on your own. Just bombard the form with changes to the verb system:
* active or passive (voice),
* question or statement or command, action verb or stative verb (be, seem, smell, look -- these last two in the descriptive sense of "The dog smells horrible" instead of "The dog smells easily with its powerful nose"),
* indicative vs. interrogative vs. imperative vs. subjunctive ("Fido attacks people," "Does Fido attack people?" "Fido, Attack!" "Fido would attack if he had teeth"),
* progressive vs. simple vs. perfect ("Fido has attacked 20 people"),
* past vs. present, and the modal system (the latter being the use of words like will [in the sense of the future], can, may, might, would, could, etc.)
* negation (making things not)
These kinds of stressors can be put on whatever verb you're dealing with to see how it behaves. This can elicit from your own thought experiments how particular verbs behave.

Notice you can get a chain of which part of the verb system goes where. Look at this sentence:
* You will not be attacked by Fido.
* You can not be attacked by Fido.

Grammatically, they are the same. Notice the order: SUBJECT[modal] [negation] [be] BASE VERB by OBJ. This is the basic sentence pattern of any passive present sentence with an object.

Anyway, with some basic knowledge of all the nastiness that can happen to the verb, you will probably be able to work some of these issues out on your own.

[Cerriowen]

may be kind of simplistic (because i teach kindy)

to learn question and answer differences... I point out that usually the first word of the question, is the last word of the answer.

DO you like Chicken?
Yes I DO.

Are they small?
yes they ARE

DO chickens taste good?
Yes they DO

ARE chicken tasty?
Yes they ARE

But yea... again it's the verb vs adj