Стр. 64 - Skurikhin_Communicative style

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TYPES OF QUESTIONS
1.
Open
questions
Why didn’t you come to
this conference last year?
Where did you go on
holiday this year?
A.
In theory, these are good for ‘opening a
conversation up’, because there are many possible
answers. In practice, questions with why or how are
often better at opening up a conversation than
questions with where or when, which can often be
answered with a single word or phrase.
2. Closed questions
Have you had a holiday this
year?
Do you do any sports?
B.In theory, these ‘close down the conversation’, by
allowing a one-word answer: yes or no. In practice,
only a very rude person would answer with a single
word, so they can actually be very effective for
keeping conversations going.
3.
Negative questions
Hasn’t the weather been
awful this summer?
Shouldn’t you wait for a
better offer before you sell
your house?
Didn’t you use to work in
China?
C.These questions are useful when you want to
express your opinion in a way that shows that you
want to involve the other person. As these examples
show, they can be used to turn an obvious statement
into a discussion, to make an opinion seem less
direct and to check a fact that you’re not sure of.
4.
Hypothetical
questions
In an ideal world, what
would your dream job be?
So what if money were no
object?
D.
These questions typically include the word
‘would’, or sometimes might or could. It’s also
possible to start this type of question with ‘what if +
past tense’. Questions like this aren’t great for
starting a natural-sounding conversation, but they’re
very useful for keeping a conversation going when
you have run out of other ideas.
5.
Question tags
Your wife’s a doctor, isn’t
she?
It’s been a great party,
hasn’t it.
E.These work in the same way as negative
questions, by turning a statement into a question.
These are often used to check something we are not
sure of, as in the first example, which has rising
(questioning) intonation, or simply to invite the other
person to respond to your opinion, in which case
there is falling intonation, as in a sentence.
6.
Statements
with
questioning intonation
And there’s nothing you
can do about it?
You
work
in
pharmaceuticals?
Really?
F. These are the easiest questions to make, but they
can be a very effective way of checking information
and encouraging the other person to expand
something he/she said earlier. You can change the
focus of the question simply by stressing different
words.
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