negative wh- questions

[dany]

Hi there,
I need some help! Can we say "What doesn't she like doing?" as well as we can say "What does she like doing?".
Grammatically it should be correct, but, I don't know, it sounds a little weird to me...

What do you think?
Thanks so much for your help,

Daniela from Italy

[nikita]

Hello,

This question is perfectly alright. Trust me.

But if you need a more formal sentence without contracted forms like “doesn’t”, then the full sentence will look like this:

“What does she not like doing?”

Good luck!

Nikita

[dany]

Thank you very much for your help Nikita! I'm a teacher of English as a foreign language, but sometimes this language makes me wonder!! I'd like to have a better knowledge of it, but, you know, it'll never be like I was a native speaker! Anyway, I'll do my best

[nikita]

Hello, Dany

Recently I attended a presentation on the current tendencies in the English language, where I saw the following phrase:

English is a muddle.

And guess who said it? Michael Swan. I mean the Michael Swan. The one who has written loads of book about how English language works.

You should not worry about being not a native speaker. I don’t, for example. The current trend is that now more people use English for business who learnt it as a second language than the native speakers. We are different, so what?

For example, right now I’m reading “The Lexical Approach” by Michael Lewis. Here is what he writes about it:

One negative effect of the misuse of Chomsky’s distinction was the unnecessary prominence given to the concept of the ‘educated native speaker’. Many non-native teachers of English who use English fluently and effectively in a wide range of situations still have an unfortunate tendency to compare themselves to the hypothetical, but non-existing ‘educated native speaker’. This can lead to a wholly unnecessary inferiority complex. On the whole, the native speaker meets more naturally produced English than the non-native; if the native speaker is ‘educated’ it may be possible to introspect perceptively into this data. On the other hand, effective use of English, and a fortiori effective teaching of English, depends much more on a whole range of other factors – personality, confidence, creativity, education and social sensitivity. Non-native speakers need to focus on the combination of factors which make them effective members of the international speech community which uses English, rather than worrying about the unimportant factor of whether they are, or are not, native speakers.

Phew, I’m exhausted after typing it. So, chin up. It’s not that bad at all.

And good luck with your classes.

Nikita