Hey, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on yes/no questions
for advanced speakers. So at this level, I know most of you know how to form yes/no questions
with auxiliary verbs, right? So an auxiliary verb always comes at the start of a yes/no
question, like, "Do you have a pen?" "Did you try the soup?" "Are you hungry?" "Can
you drive?" "Have you read The Hunger Games?" which is a novel, okay? So advanced speakers,
what you need to understand is that these are grammatically correct sentences, grammatically
correct questions. They're perfect. However, when you speak to a native speaker, they might
not always form the questions in this way. Occasionally, we get lazy. We forget words.
And what we do is we usually drop the auxiliary verb at the start of a yes/no question. So
for example, "Do you have a pen?" becomes, "Do you have a pen?" Okay? Instead of, "Do
you have a pen?" "Do you have a pen?" So this is possible, and this is very common for native
speakers. "How about, 'Did you try the soup?'" Just remove the auxiliary verb. "Did you
try the soup?" "Hey, you try the soup?" Okay? "Did you try the soup?" becomes, "You try
the soup?" So again, this is really important because it helps you to understand what native
speakers are actually saying. Just because they don't say the auxiliary verb, you might
become confused. Say, "Why is their intonation going up? Why are they asking a question?"
They're asking the question just because in speaking, in conversational, informal English,
we don't always use that auxiliary verb at the start of a yes/no question. So, "Are you
hungry?" becomes, "Hey, you hungry?" "You want to eat?" Right? Instead of, "Do you want
to eat?" "You want to eat?" "You want to go out?" "Do you want to go out?" Okay? "Can
you drive?" Okay? So, you want to go to -- let's say that you want to go to see a movie, and
you want to know which one of your friends can drive. "Hey, you drive?" "Can you drive?"
Okay? You can also be, "Do you drive?" That's the only tricky part. Sometimes you don't
know which auxiliary verb they're using, but the basic meaning is the same, right? You
want to get, "Can they drive?" or "Do they drive?" It's very similar. "Have you read
The Hunger Games?" Remove the auxiliary verb "have" and say, "Hey, you read The Hunger
Games? Have you read it? You read it?" Okay? So, guys, especially advanced speakers and
new speakers, intermediate speakers, just be aware that there are native speakers, many
of them, who do this and use this structure. If you want to test your understanding of
this, check out the quiz on www.engvid.com. Good luck, guys. Take care.