Questions with Was and Were

There are many different types of questions, and one type are questions with “was” or “were”.

Was and were are two different words that have the same meaning. They both mean “to be.” and they are used to talk about past events.

In this blog post we’ll explore how to make questions with was and were to talk about past experiences you and others have had.

Table of Contents

Questions with Was and Were: Structure

Remember that you can make closed and open questions with any tense in English.

With the words was and were, we can make:

Past Progressive Questions

Verb to be Questions

Let’s check the structure to make each one of them

This is the structure to make closed questions with the past progressive:

Was / Were	Pronoun	Verb + ing?
Was	she	running?

This is the structure to make open questions with the past progressive:

Wh-Question	Was / Were	Pronoun	Verb + ing?
Why	Was	she	running?

Now, let’s check how to make questions with was and were and the verb to be

These are the structure to make closed questions with verb to be:

Was / Were	Pronoun	Complement?
Was	she	Happy?

These are the structure to make open questions with verb to be:

Wh-Question	Was / Were	Pronoun	Complement?
Why	Was	she	Happy?

These are some examples of questions using was and were divided into past progressive and verb to be questions.

These are some past progressive questions using was

These are some past progressive questions using were

These are some questions with was and were and the verb to be