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Intonation:
In speech, intonation is the use of changing (rising and falling) vocal pitch to convey
grammatical information or personal attitude. Intonation is particularly important in
expressing questions in spoken English. For example, take the sentence, "When does the
meeting start?" The word "start"—including the question mark—rises up or comes up in your
voice when you utter the word, notes the website English Pronunciation Roadmap.

The Musicality of Language:

Intonation is the melody or music of a language, Intonation refers to the way your voice rises
and falls as you speak, as in,
"It's raining, isn't it? (or 'innit,' perhaps)"

In this sentence, you're not really asking a question: You're telling the listener that it's raining,
so you give your speech a "telling" melody. The pitch-level of your voice falls and you sound
as if you know what you're talking about, and of course, you do, so you're making a
statement. But now imagine that you don't know if it's raining, says Crystal. You think there
might be a shower outside, but you're unsure, so you ask someone to check. You use the
same words, but the musicality of your voice makes a different point, as in,

"It's raining, isn't it?"

Now you're asking the person, so you give your speech an "asking" melody, says Crystal. The
pitch-level of your voice rises, and you sound as if you're asking a question.
Pitch and Chunking
To understand intonation, it's important to comprehend two of its key terms: pitch and
chunking. "the relative highness or lowness of a tone as perceived by the ear, which depends
on the number of vibrations per second produced by the vocal cords."

ACCENT:
The term accent has various meanings, but in speaking, an accent is an identifiable style of
pronunciation, often varying regionally or even socioeconomically.
It can be contrasted with a person's dialect, which includes regional vocabulary.

Stress:
What is Word Stress?
In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word, we
accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong, important) and all the
other syllables very quietly.

Let's take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic.

Do they sound the same when spoken?
No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each word. And it is not always the same
syllable. So the "shape" of each word is different.
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Listen to these words.

Do you hear the stressed syllable in each word?
This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables:
TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa, aBOVE, converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND,
etCETera, etCETera, etcetera

The syllables that are not stressed are weak or small or quiet. Fluent speakers of English
listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word stress in your
speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your
comprehension.
Try to hear the stress in individual words each time you listen to English - on the radio, or in
films for example. Your first step is to HEAR and recognise it. After that, you can USE it!
There are two very important rules about word stress:
1. One word, one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. So if you hear two stresses, you
have heard two words, not one word.)
2. The stress is always on a vowel.

Active and Passive voice:

An action of a subject in relation to an object is expressed in two ways called voices.
Voice can be categorized into two broad categories:
Active Voice
Passive Voice
The structure of a sentence and its sequence of subject and object is reversed when converted
from Active voice to Passive voice or vice versa, but its meaning remains the same.
The form of the verb also changes when a sentence I converted from active to Passiv Voice
or vice versa.

For example,
Active Voice: Raj ate an apple.
Passive Voice: An apple was eaten by Raj.

Active Voice
In Active Voice the subject acts upon the object, i.e. the subject performs the action.
A sentence in Active Voice has Subject + Verb + Object.

Passive voice
In Passive Voice the object is acted upon by the subject and gives more importance to the
action, not the subject.
A sentence in Passive Voice has Object + Verb + Subject and uses the past participle form of
the verb.

For example,
A new car was bought by him.
Rules to change Active voice to Passive voice
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The subject will shift to the place of object and object will shift to the place of the subject.

Active Voice: He bought a new car.

Passive Voice: A new car was bought by him.

By is used before the subject in Passive Voice.

Active Voice: He bought a new car.

Passive Voice: A new car was bought by him.

A sentence in Passive Voice uses the past participle form of the verb.

Active Voice: Subhendu ate an apple.

Passive Voice: An apple was eaten by Subhendu.

‘With’ or ‘to’ can also be used before subject in Passive Voice instead of ‘by’ in some cases
depending upon the subject of the sentence.

Active Voice: I know Meenal.

Passive Voice: Meenal is known to me.

A form of the auxiliary verb is added to the main verb to change the form of the main verb.
Active Voice: He bought a new car.
Passive Voice: A new car was bought by him.

Question tags:

Question tags in English

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1. Use
frequently used in spoken English when you want someone to agree or disagree
2. Form
positive statement → question tag negative → You are Tom, aren't you?
negative statement → question tag positive → He isn't Joe, is he?

3. Examples
with auxiliaries
You've got a car, haven't you?

without auxiliaries (don't, doesn't, didn't)

They play football on Sundays, don't they?
She plays football on Sundays, doesn't she?
They played football on Sundays, didn't they?
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Questions tags are used to keep a conversation going. You can agree or refuse to a sentence
with a question tag.
Affirmative sentence: He is from Germany, isn't he?
Negative sentence: He isn't from Germany, is he?
Possible answers are Yes or No. If you use Yes, do not use contracted forms. If you use No,
contracted form are
possible.
Yes, he is.

No, he is not. or No, he isn't. or No, he's not.

4. Special points
Although the negative word not is not in the sentence, the sentence can be
negative. Then we use the positive question tag.
He never goes out with his dog, does he?
If have is a main verb in the sentence and refers to states, there are two possible
sentences – We have a car, _____?
We have a car, haven't we? mostly British English
We have a car, don't we? mostly American English

Use will/would with imperatives (Simple Present).

Open the window, will you?
Open the window, would you?
Don't open your books, will you?

We use won't with a polite request.

Open the window, won't you?

We use shall aer Let's.

Let's take the next bus, shall we?

Auxiliary must
We must be at home at 8 pm, mustn't we?
Yes, we must.
No, we needn't.

Personal pronoun I
I am late, aren't I?
This form is commonly used (mostly informal). It is because there is no contracted form for
am + not (amn't).

Grammatically correct would be: am I not. This is only used in formal situations

Framing of questions
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Before studying to frame questions, we have to learn all the most relevant question words and
their purposes and also understand more about the types and
patterns of interrogative sentences ( sentences denoting questions).
First of all, let’s study about the types and patterns of interrogative sentences.
Interrogative sentences are in two types.
1. Auxiliary beginning interrogative sentences &
2. Question word beginning interrogative sentences
Auxiliary beginning interrogative sentences.
Interrogative sentences beginning with auxiliary verbs are known as Auxiliary beginning
interrogative sentences.
The answer of this type of interrogative sentences is always ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. So they are also
called as ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions. This type of sentences can be used in Active

voice and Passive voice.

The common pattern in Active Voice is shown as below:-
Auxiliary Verb + Subject + Verb + O ?
Eg: Do you know Grammar ?

Here ‘Do’ is the auxiliary verb, ‘You’ is the subject, ‘know’ is the verb and ‘Grammar’ is the
object.

The common pattern in Passive voice is given below:-

Auxiliary verb + O + V3 ( past participle form of the verb) + by + Subject ?
Eg: Is Grammar known by you?
Here, ‘Is’ is the auxiliary verb, ‘Grammar’ is the object, ‘known’ is the V3 and ‘you’ is the
subject.

Framing of questions
Question word beginning interrogative sentences.
Interrogative sentences beginning with question words are known as question word beginning
interrogative sentences. They can be used in Active voice and Passive
voice.
The common pattern of this type of interrogative sentences in Active Voice is as shown
below:–
Question word + Auxiliary verb + Subject + Verb + Object ?

Eg: When did Jacob ask the question?

Here, ‘When’ is the question word, ‘did’ is the Auxiliary verb, ‘Jacob’ is the subject, ‘ask’ is
the verb and ‘the question’ is the object in the example.
The common pattern in Passive voice is given below:-
Question word + Be-forms + Object + V3 ( past participle form of the verb) + by + Subject ?

Eg:- When was the question asked by Martin?

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Here, ‘When’ is the question word, ‘was’ is the be-form, ‘the question’ is the object, ‘asked’
is the past participle form of the verb ( V3) and ‘Martin’ is the subject.
But if the question word is ‘Who’ or ‘What’, there will be a slight difference in the pattern in
both voices. To know the difference and understand more about
auxiliary beginning and question word beginning interrogative sentences in both voices.
Now we are going to study more about question words and their purposes one by one in
detail.

Who
The question word ‘Who’ is used to denote persons. The purpose of this question word is to
know the ‘Do-er’ ( subject) of the ‘verb’ in a sentence.
Eg: Martin played football.
Here, if we have to know the ‘Do-er’ of the verb ‘played’ in the sentence, we should use the
question word ‘ who’. Then we get the answer ‘Martin’.
To frame a question for the given sentence as example, the question word Who is to be used
in the interrogative sentence with the purpose of getting Martin as the
answer, as shown below;

Who played football ?

Now, let’s see the given direction and try to frame a question as directed.
‘Megha’ attended the meeting. ( Frame a question to get the word in italics as answer)
Here we know that ‘Megha’, the word in italics, is the subject of the sentence. So to get this
as answer, we should use the question word ‘Who’.
Then the question will be,
Who attended the meeting?

Whom
This is also used to denote persons in a sentence. The purpose of this question word is to
know the object in a sentence.
Eg: Mathew called ‘Mary’.
Here Mary is the object in the sentence. So, to know the object in the sentence, the question
word Whom is to be used as shown below,
Whom did Mathew call?
By whom.
This question word is used in passive voice as subject. The purpose of the question word is to
know the ‘Do-er’ of the verb in a sentence.
Eg: The work was completed by ‘John’.
Here the sentence is in passive voice and ‘John’ is the subject. So, to get John as the answer,
the question word ‘By whom’ is to be used as follows,
By whom was the work completed?

It is used to denote the object in a sentence.

Eg; Mahesh wrote a ‘poem’.
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The object of the sentence is ‘poem’. To get ‘poem’ as the answer, the question word ‘what’
is to be used here, as shown below,
What did Mahesh write ?
Which
It is used to denote nouns.
Eg: ‘Grammar’ is very tough to him.
Here ‘Grammar’ is the noun. To get Grammar as answer, the question word ‘which’ is to be
used, as follows,
Which is very tough to him?
Which + noun.
It is used to denote a ‘noun along with adjective’ standing as an object in a sentence.
Eg: She often likes ‘long kurtas’.
Here, ‘long Kurtas’ is the object of the sentence in which ‘kurtas’ is the ‘noun’ that stands
along with the adjective ‘long’. So to get ‘long kurtas’ as answer, the
question word ‘Which + noun’ is to be used as shown below,

‘Which kurtas’ does she often like?

When.
It is used to know the ‘time’ of the verb in a sentence.
Eg: Tom reached there at ‘4. P.M’.
Here, ‘4.P.M’. is the time of the verb ‘reached’. So, to get ‘4. P.M’. as answer, the question
word ‘When’ is to be used as follows,
‘When’ did Tom reach there?

Where
It is used to ask about a ‘place’ in a sentence.
Eg: Mathew settled in ‘Australia’.
Here ‘Australia’ denotes a place (a country) and to get it as answer, the question word
‘Where’ is to be used as shown below,
‘Where’ did Mathew settle?

Why
It is used to ask about a reason.
Eg: Jancy missed the train because ‘she was late’.

Here, the fact ‘She was late’ is the reason for Jancy to have missed the train. So to get the
reason as answer, the question word ‘Why’ is to be used as follows,
‘Why’ did Jancy miss the train?
The above question words are known as Wh-question words.
Question words beginning with How are given below.

How.
It is used to ask about ‘the manner or the way of the verb being done’ in a sentence.
Eg: Namit went to school ‘by bus’.
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Here, the phrase ‘by bus’ denotes ‘the manner of Namit going to school’. So to get ‘the
manner’ as the answer, the question word ‘How’ is to be used as shown below,
‘How’ did Namit go to school?
How often.
It is used to ask about ‘a specific time regarding to habitual actions’.
Eg: She watches movies ‘every weekend’.
Here, ‘watching movies’ is her habitual action and ‘every weekend’ is the specific time. So to
get the specific time as the answer, the question word ‘How often’ is to be
used as follows,
‘How often’ does she watch movies?
How far.
It is used to ask about the distance between places.
Eg: The Moon is 384,400 km. away from Earth.
Here, 384,400 km is the distance and to get it as the answer, the question word ‘How far’ is to
be used as shown below,
‘How far’ is the Moon away from Earth?
How long.
It is used to ask about the duration of time.
Eg: We should wait here for ‘2 hours’.
Here, ‘2 hours’ is a duration of time and to get it as answer, the question word ‘How long’ is
to be used as follows,
‘How long’ should we wait here?
How many.
It is used to ask about numbers.
Eg: He has ‘two’ cars.
Here , ‘two’ is the number and to get it as the answer, the question word ‘How many’ is to be
used as shown below,
‘How many’ cars does he have?
How much.
It is used to ask about the quantity of something.

Eg: Mary bought ‘2 litres milk’.

Here, 2 litres milk is a quantity and to get it as answer, the question word ‘How much’ is to
be used as follows,
‘How much’ milk did Mary bought.
The difference between the question words ‘How many’ and ‘How much’ is that while ‘How
many’ denotes ‘numbers of something’, ‘How much’ denotes ‘quantity of
something’.
Eg: Q : How many kilometres should we travel to reach there?
Ans: We should travel 4 kilometres to reach there.
Q : How much did you pay for that?
Ans: I paid 800rs for that.
Thus we have studied the most relevant question words and how to frame questions in this
topic.