Talking About Holidays – Listening Lesson (A2)

The ‘incorrect’ options may be correct language – but they’re not what the speakers say: your job is to identify what you hear. Sometimes the incorrect options are also incorrect language. Click ‘Hint’ for more details.

1. Which question does the man ask?

2. Which expression does the woman use?

3. Which does the woman say?

4. Which does the woman say?

5. Which question does the man ask?

The capital letter has been removed from the first word to make this exercise more of a challenge, and so has the question mark after the last word!

1. If you want the answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, an easy way to form a question is to make an affirmative statement, then add ‘right?’

The word order is: subject + verb + complement + right?
Example: You’re German, right?

Unfortunately for you, this isn’t possible in more formal situations, but it’s fine in informal contexts like this recording.

Sort the words to form the question used in the dialogue.

2. If the context is not informal, you must use a different word order for yes/no questions:

auxiliary verb + subject + main verb + complement
Example: Do you like sunbathing?

The auxiliary verb depends on the tense – the example in the last sentence uses the present tense ‘do’ but the question from the dialogue is in the past simple.

3. Some questions can’t be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – they are asking for information. In most information questions, you need an auxiliary verb and the same word order as the previous example, plus a question word at the beginning:

question word + auxiliary verb + subject + main verb (+ complement)
Example: Where do you live?

Now make an information question from the dialogue.

4. You don’t need the auxiliary verb ‘do’ if the main verb is ‘be’, but you still need question word order, with the verb before the subject:

question word + be + subject (+ complement)
Example: Why are you interested in castles?

A complement is something that comes after the verb to tell you more about the subject – e.g. ‘you’ (the subject) are ‘interested in castles’ – but not all questions have a complement. The question from the dialogue doesn’t have one.

5. When the main verb is ‘be’, there is often a ‘dummy’ subject in English – that is, the word ‘it’ or ‘there’ which acts as the subject in terms of grammar but doesn’t really mean anything. When this happens, a complement is needed – because ‘it’ and ‘there’ don’t carry meaning, so something has to! The word order is the same as the last example:

question word + be + dummy subject + complement (+ adverbial)
Example: Why are there so many churches here?

Adverbial information is optional – it adds detail about time or place.

Now make a ‘dummy subject’ question from the dialogue.

We pronounce some words more prominently than others – they are a bit longer and louder – because those words put the meaning in the sentence: this is stress.

We say some phrases with a rise or fall in the pitch, to give a message to the speaker that is not contained in the meaning of the individual words: this is intonation.

1. Normally, nouns, verbs (apart from ‘be’), adjectives and adverbs are stressed because they put meaning in the sentence; prepositions, articles and pronouns don’t, so they’re unstressed.

Listen to the recording and choose which words are stressed.

2. If a speaker thinks some words are even more important than the other stressed words, they can make them prominent – that is, much longer than normal.

Which words are prominent in the recording?

3. We use intonation to indicate to someone else whether we have finished speaking or not. Your voice should fall and slow down at the end of a sentence, but rise if you haven’t finished yet.

Has the speaker in this clip finished her sentence?

4. We also use intonation in lists. When you’re writing a list you can use bullet points – and when you’re speaking, use pauses and a certain intonation.

What do both speakers do with their voices for each item in the list?

5. Like the grammar of word order, there’s more than one rule for intonation in questions.

In this information question, does the speaker’s voice rise or fall at the end?

They all contain a ‘silent’ /t/. Click ‘Hint’ for more information about what is happening in the mouth.