Many of my accent reduction clients have told me that their colleagues don’t always respond right away when they ask questions.

That’s because they never learned the correct intonation patterns to use when asking questions in English.

If you don’t know these rules…don’t worry….I’ll explain them now.✔

We use two different intonation patterns when questions in American English.

1. We use rising intonation when the question can be answered with a “yes” or a “no”.

For example the question; “Are you COMing? ⤴” has rising intonation.

2. We use rising -falling intonation when the question starts with a “wh” word such as what, when, where, who or how.

For example the question; “When are you COMing? ⤵” has rising falling intonation.

Ready to practice this?  You can follow this link to take my short ☛ Intonation Quiz