How do we use iteration?

During a conversation, we might ask short questions of just one or two words to show that we are paying attention and also to steer the conversation to things which interest us. These questions can have question words, or be made questions simply by inflection.
For example:
I went to town yesterday.
To town?
Yes, Mike and I wanted to see Fred.
Who's Mike?
You know, Mike from the school.

We can also use question tags, can't we?

These are used to keep a conversation going. You reply to question tags with 'Yes' or 'no'. To form a question tag, you use the auxiliary, modal or the verb 'to be' in the main sentence, and follow it with the subject pronoun. If the main statement is positive, the question tag should be negative, and if the statement is positive, the question tag is negative.
For example:
You know about this, don't you?

Sometimes we use a question tag to challenge an opinion, or to ask someone to confirm one. In these cases we do not change positive to negative in the tag.

For example:
Oh, so you saw a ghost, did you?
Yes, I did!

I'm going to do it right now!
Oh, you are, are you? Try it and see what happens.

What are rhetorical questions for? Emphasis, of course

Sometimes we ask a question to which we know the answer. The question is simply to focus the listener's attention on what is to come. Politicians use this often. (In fact the word comes from rhetor which means 'public speaker'.)
For example:
What is wrong with this country? The government/opposition, thats what! What can you do? Vote for me.

However, we also use rhetorical questions in everyday life.
Is this familiar?:
Do you know what time it is? How can you come home so late when you have school tomorrow?

And finally, what about sarcasm?

The English are very fond of sarcasm. Sometimes questions which seem completely innocent have hidden sarcasm, and sometimes sarcasm is very obvious.
For example, a shop assistant who is having problems with a fussy customer might ask
'Is there anything else I can do for you?' (That slight emphasis on 'else' shows that she thinks she has dome too much already.)
Someone who is less concerned with being polite might simply ask
''So what did your last slave die from? Overwork perhaps?'

(There will be more on this topic in the functions unit later on which deals with sarcasm and irony.)

Okay, do you now understand questions? Easy, aren't they? So now do you want to do some exercises to see how you do? And where are the exercises? Perhaps the blue arrow is a clue?

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