Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm having some problems getting to grips with tag questions. My students have no problem with the form, but I'm not quite clear on how to teach them when to use them. All the stuff I read about them says that we use them to confirm information, but it seems to me that we use them for many more functions than that.

For example:

You're not going to forget, are you? A warning.
You don't speak Japanese, do you? Asking if per chance you speak it / expressing suprise that you speak it (depending on intonation).
You've forgotten it, haven't you? Disapproval / anger.
She's great, isn't she? Asking for agreement.

My coursebook introduces them at the elementary level, but explaining when we use them requires a much higher level of English than my students possess. Also, I'm tired of only gap fills to practice them, but can't think of another way - if I ask the students to practice them they come up with examples such as the ones above that lead to long discussions about exactly when and how we would use them.

Also, is there a pattern to the use of the negative-positive (you aren't, are you?) and the positive-negative (you are, aren't you?) questions? Or should I be concentrating more on the verb forms than the functions (have, haven't, is, isn't...)?

Help!

Confused.

You aren't the only one less than satisfied with standard approaches:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=1075

These are surely related to this whole area too:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 1380#11380
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 2833#12833

My advice is, post this again on the Applied Linguistics forum, it might get more of a response there.

I recall Michael Lewis having a thing or two to say about tags also (generally, that they are badly taught, and therefore become an obsession for many learners until they either crack them or give up trying!), but I can't remember in which of his books exactly. Perhaps The English Verb?

As Lewis (and metal56, in the first of the above thread links) says, standardizing the punctuation we use in tags would be a good first step (commas, question marks, or lack of them) in more clearly showing the intended function.

Nic wrote:You're not going to forget, are you? A warning.
You don't speak Japanese, do you? Asking if per chance you speak it / expressing suprise that you speak it (depending on intonation).
You've forgotten it, haven't you? Disapproval / anger.
She's great, isn't she? Asking for agreement.

Given the functions you're envisaging, I'm imagining the prosody would be as shown below:

-You're NOT going to forget (,) are you. (Some might see this as rising, but I feel it would be flat or have a downward contour).
-You don't speak Japanese, ^do you?^ (=Hope you do!= Do you speak Japanese? I'm not sure how to annotate for "surprise" or "disbelief", I'd probably myself more just make a surprised exclamation along the lines of, 'Wow, you speak Japanese! I can't believe it/What a surprise!' etc)
-You've forgotten it (,) haven't you.
-She's great (,) isn't she(!)

(The last two can only be falling intonation).

That is, all but your "Japanese" example have a rather flat-to-falling intonation (certainly not rising?); and only the last seems to be a clear example of what Lewis would call an "invitation" tag (not sure what he'd call your "warning" and "anger" ones, but ultimately they are inviting or soliciting an "expected" answer, and can probably therefore be lumped in with the invitation type).

What is trickier to me is the function of rising tags (see the similarly named thread at the above link). When added to a negative statement, the positive tag holds out a hope that the statement is not true, combining to form a question that much more marked than simply "checking": there is a lot of uncertainty intermingled with resigned hope (the possibility of a negative answer has already been accounted for in the negative statement). This is in contrast to 'You speak Japanese (don't you/right)', 'Do you speak Japanese?', 'You speak Japanese (do you)!', 'You don't speak Japanese?/Don't you speak Japanese?(!)', and 'You speak Japanese, don't you?!' (last isn't so much hope, or even surprise - see previous negative statement/Q - but dismay?).

Have I overlooked any possibilities there (of form, missing forms, rather than functions, at this stage)?

It will be interesting to hear your views, Nic.