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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale for the Study
Tag Questions are important devices in the English language and are used very
often by native speakers. Almost all
languages have tag questions; however,
Canonical Tag Questions are unique to the English language (Bublitz, 1979) and
mastering them requires a high level of proficiency in English (Holmes, 1982). In
terms of formal properties, canonical English tag questions are sensitive to three main
factors: the choice of auxiliary and pronoun, polarity (negation),
and intonation
pattern. Even though the general uses of tag questions follow the described
constraints, their actual use in real life appears to be much more complex (Ann, 2011,
p. 6).
Students over the world find learning question tags
in English confusing and
difficulty because some Asian languages don‟t have question tags. The results of the
survey in Vietnamese students' classrooms are also given the fact that English tag
questions is still limited because of commonly mistakes. To overcoming these
obstacles is probably a big challenge for students. This is also the reason why students
lack confidence in using English tag questions to communicate.
This study investigates to find out what are the syntactic
and pragmatic features of
English tag questions. The results of the study reveal that non-native speakers cannot
use Canonical Tag Questions appropriately because of
the syntactic complexity of
these kinds of questions, but because of their pragmatic requirements. The results also
show possible solutions to mistakes commonly committed by students at Nguyen Thi
Minh khai high school.
