Subject and object questions

## Level and focus

**Level:** A2  
**Category:** Questions

Distinguish questions about the subject from questions about the object.

By the end of this lesson, learners should be able to: **Form who/what questions with or without do/does/did according to the role of the question word.**

## Core idea

This lesson adds a recommended grammar point that improves the coverage of the curriculum without changing the overall CEFR progression. Learners should first recognise the pattern, then practise controlled examples, and only later combine it with adjacent grammar.

## Form

- `subject question: Who called you?`

• object question: Who did you call?

• what/who as subject uses normal verb form

• what/who as object uses auxiliary do/does/did

  Meaning and use

  Use this grammar when the speaker needs the meaning described in the lesson goal. The examples should stay close to the level and should not rely on advanced vocabulary or several new grammar points at once.

  Examples

  • Who lives here?

• Who did you meet yesterday?

• What happened?

• What did you buy?

  Common mistakes

  • Using did in subject questions: not Who did call you?; use Who called you?.

• Dropping did in object questions: not Who you called?; use Who did you call?.

• Confusing meaning: not Who called Anna? vs Who did Anna call?; use Use word order to show who does the action.

  Teaching sequence

  1. Start with a clear contrast between two forms or meanings.
  2. Give short controlled examples with familiar vocabulary.
  3. Include one item that targets a common mistake.
  4. Add mixed review items that distinguish this point from a neighbouring lesson.
  5. End with simple sentence-level production or recognition.

  Boundary: what not to cover here

  Keep this to direct questions. Indirect questions are handled separately at B1.

  Suggested practice

  For the current exercise system, use 25 multiple-choice exercises. Include clear distractors that test the target grammar, not obscure vocabulary. Later, this lesson can be expanded with gap-fill, error-correction or transformation tasks.

Quick check

Before you move on, can you explain the rule in one sentence and make one example of your own?