You “want” me to what??

I find I spend a LOT of my day talking about things I want, or things I want other people to do.  When talking about things I want (pizza, more money, time, etc) the usage is very straightforward.  But when expressing the desire for something to happen, the structure becomes a bit more complicated. 

Simple examples: 

• I want a new car. 
• I want a bigger house.

More complicated examples with multiple subjects: 

• I want you to wash the dishes. 
• They want us to arrive early. 
• I want my hair to grow faster. 

Note that in all of these cases, the following structure is used: 

Subject + “want” + object/pronoun + “to” + infinitive verb and optional ending. 

Let’s break this down with the first example from above:  “I want you to wash the dishes.”: 

1. subject: “I”
2. “want”
3. object/pronoun: “you”
4. “to”
5. infinitive verb: “wash”
6. optional ending: “the dishes”

Forming questions

When forming questions with this structure, the following patterns can be used: 

1. Question word (What, when, where, how)
2. “do”
3. object/pronoun
4. “want”
5. object/pronoun
6. “to”
7. infinitive verb
8. optional ending

Some example questions: 

• What do you want me to bring to the party? 
• When do you want us to arrive? 
• Where do you want her to put the flowers? 
• How do you want them to act? 

Using the first example, we see it follows our pattern: 

1. What
2. do
3. you
4. want
5. me
6. to
7. bring
8. to the party?

Note that the word “want” can be changed to “need” in all of these cases in order to increase the intensity of the desire.