When you make an enquiry, you can use indirect questions to make your requests sound more polite.
Compare:
How much does it cost?
Could you tell me how much it costs?
Is there a table available?
I was wondering if there was a table available.
Indirect questions are particularly useful when you’re speaking to someone you don’t know or making a more formal enquiry.
Complete the activities below to practise some useful expressions and the word order we use in indirect questions.
Activity 1: Polite enquiry phrases
Drag the words into the correct gaps to complete the polite questions.
These are useful phrases to remember as complete expressions:
I was wondering if …
Could you tell me whether …
Do you know if …
Would it be possible to …
Activity 2: Question order
When a question becomes part of a longer, indirect question, the word order often changes.
For example:
Where is the hotel?
→ Could you tell me where the hotel is?
How much does it cost?
→ Could you tell me how much it costs?
We don’t normally say:
❌ Could you tell me how much does it cost?
Read each situation and choose the correct indirect question.
Remember: You don’t need to make every question indirect. In a real conversation, speakers use a mixture of direct and indirect questions. These expressions are useful when you want to make an enquiry sound more polite.
Could you tell me …?
I was wondering if …
Do you know whether …?
Would it be possible to …?
That final point is important pedagogically: otherwise the activities can inadvertently suggest that direct questions such as “How much does it cost?” are somehow impolite or incorrect.