Question Tags with the Verb “Have”

Well I do hope that you have had a nice time working with the verb “have” to create sentences in the present perfect aspect. The other aspect that results from the have verb is the past perfect aspect. This one presents no problem t users of English because it uses only the verb “had” e.g. I had gone to school. The only thing you need to know about the past perfect aspect is that is usually used to report two activities that are complete. Thus, I had gone to school by the time the accident occurred. Now we can turn to the lesson that I promised you yesterday: Question tags with the verb have. Objective: to construct question tags using the verb have. We will remember that when we looked at question tags with the verb do, we said that question tags are formed from auxiliary verbs in the sentence. Therefore, if a sentence has any form of the verb “have”, that is what we will use to form the tag question. Of course we now have a huge stock of sentences to use. We will begin by borrowing sentences from the have lesson. 1) I have driven this car, haven’t I? 2) You have driven this car, haven’t you? 3) They have driven this car, haven’t they? 4) We have driven this car, haven’t we? 5) Mary and John have driven this car, haven’t they? That is it. Just remember to observe the punctuation instructions. Now try and construct question tags for the sentences you had constructed for this exercise. Let’s now borrow sentences from the “has” lesson. 1) Mary has begun her music course, hasn’t she? 2) The gardener has burned the rubbish, hasn’t he? 3) The teacher has caught a thief, hasn’t she? 4) He has found the hidden treasure, hasn’t he? 5) My spouse has given me a gift, hasn’t she? 6) She has gone to school, hasn’t she? 7) The nurse has shaken the medicine bottle, hasn’t he? 8) The child has stood in the rain for long, hasn’t he? I notice that all my sentences are positive. So you can begin by changing them into the negative and then create tags for them e.g. I have not driven that car, have I? Mary has not begun her music course, has she? Finally, the perfect aspect can also be used to make tag questions. They had driven that car for five years before I bought it, hadn’t they? Well you should now use the have verb with lots of confidence. Of course I have intentionally avoided the progressive aspect because it hardly presents a problem. However, should you have any problem with me just enter your comment or contact me directly via email.