I have been getting confused with this group lately, because every time the group of students is different.

Anyway, yesterday we did a lot of listening during the class. We listened to some telephone conversations. Somebody was calling all her friends to ask them for different favours, like borrowing a suitcase, a digital camera or a car.

We have been learning how to make requests. We can do it in different ways, depending on who we are talking to. The way we make a request may be more or less formal. We can say:

Can you....?
Is it OK if I...?
Could you...?
Do you mind if I...?
Would you mind if I ...?
Would it be OK if...?
Would you mind letting me...?
I wonder is I could...
I was wondering if you´d mind ...

We can also ask somebody else to request something from another person for us. In this case we would be reporting a request.

Could you ask Jeff if I could borrow his helmet?

Could you ask Jeff to pick me up at 5:00 p.m.?


Or we ask somebody to give a message for us

Could you please tell Jeff that I am unable to go to the party?

Or ask somebody a question through somebody else:

Could you please ask Jeff what kind of oil he wants me to buy?

Notice the word that is not in bold in each sentence. Those are different ways to introduce different types of clauses.

For homework

Make 10 questions like the ones above. Make sure you use all the different types of questions you see in the example.