Reported Speech Yes/No Questions Exercises

Yes/no questions have no question word to act as a connector, so we need to add one: if or whether. "Are you coming?" becomes "She asked if I was coming." "Do you like coffee?" becomes "He asked whether I liked coffee." Both "if" and "whether" are correct and interchangeable in the vast majority of cases.

As with WH questions, the word order changes from question form to statement order — the subject comes before the verb, and the helper verb "do/does/did" disappears. Tenses backshift normally: "Did you see the film?" becomes "She asked if I had seen the film." "Can you help?" becomes "He asked if I could help." The word "whether" is slightly more formal than "if" and is preferred when presenting alternatives: "She asked whether or not I was coming." Never use a question mark at the end of a reported question — it is grammatically a statement. This is a common mistake that examiners look for in writing tasks.