Grammar Fix: Where you live?: the missing do

Objective & content

students form English questions with do-support (question word, if any, + do/does + subject + the plain verb), choosing do or does by the same person-agreement logic as third-person -s, and recognise the one case where do disappears again — when who or what already IS the subject being asked about. The printable is the unit's class pack: one A4 pupil sheet (recognition items, then fill-in and word-order drills) printed once per pupil, and one teacher sheet with the answer key and the notes below.

Pedagogical guide

every one of our learners' first languages forms a question by reordering words they already have or by intonation alone — French inverts (Habites-tu...?) or bolts on est-ce que; German and Dutch simply swap the subject and verb (Wo wohnst du?); Spanish, Italian and Portuguese rely on inversion or rising intonation alone; Polish uses a wh-word with the normal verb, or the particle czy for yes/no questions. Not one of these markets invents an extra, meaningless verb to form a question. English is the outlier: it requires a semantically empty auxiliary (do/does) purely so the real verb can stay in statement position, and that invented word has nothing for a learner's own language to map onto. Expect the same slip ("Where you live?", "What she wants?") from any class, not just from one language group. Use it after the class has watched the unit, or on its own as a targeted repair when the mistake shows up in written work.

Suggested procedure

1. (3 min) Write the target sentence on the board and ask what is wrong with it. Collect the class's answers.
2. (10 min) Pupils work through the pupil sheet alone: recognition items first, then the drills.
3. (5 min) Check with the teacher sheet. Read the explanation of each recognition item aloud.
4. (2 min) Exit line: each pupil writes one correct sentence with the structure on a slip of paper.

Adaptations

• [S] Do the recognition items together as a class before pupils try the drills alone.
• [A] in pairs, students write 3 questions to ask a partner using do or does (about hobbies, family, or free time), then swap and answer each other's questions out loud, checking together whether do or does was needed.

Materials & prerequisites

One pupil sheet per pupil, one teacher sheet. No audio needed; the Grammar Fix unit video is an optional lead-in. Watch for: omission (dropping do/does entirely — most of this sheet's recognition items test this directly, alongside choosing does correctly for one person/thing and do for everyone else); subject-question overcorrection (once "always add do" lands, learners often over-apply it to questions where who or what already IS the subject, producing "Who does live here?" instead of "Who lives here?" — a third of this sheet's items are built to catch that swing specifically, so don't be surprised if a student who has "got the rule" still fails these); do/does confusion tied to person-agreement, the same he/she/it logic as the third-person-s unit.

Curriculum alignment

Grammar tags: question-forms. Filed at A1- (the level where the mistake starts to appear); the example sentences stay inside that band.

Assessment & extensions

The exit line is the check. Extend with the Grammar Fix unit itself, or with the grammar sheet on the same structure when one exists.