It looks very easy, but in fact many learners - even fairly advanced ones - often don't know how to ask this. I've met learners who can construct a correct present perfect continuous passive sentence in English, but don't know how to phrase this most banal of questions. Just remember: asking about height is the same as asking about age : 'How old are you?' 'How tall are you?'

That's the question...so what about the answer? Well, that's not so obvious either. The US uses feet and inches, while most of the rest of the world uses metres and centimetres. The UK is a bit undecided in this respect. By law, we have to use metric measurements in shops and businesses, and in science and technology. But in the personal sphere, we still use feet and inches for measuring height and body parts (stop sniggering at the back of the class, please).

So, here's a small exercise in international communication. If you normally measure yourself in metres (GB) or meters (US), go to this page to find out the equivalent in feet and inches.

http://www.metric-conversions.org/length/meters-to-feet.htm

And if you normally measure yourself in feet and inches, go to this page:

http://www.metric-conversions.org/length/feet-to-meters.htm

For example

'How tall are you?' 'I'm 1.80m

'How tall are you?' 'I'm 5 ft 11in.

You can even help other learners by telling us how to say 'How tall are you?' in your language. There's rarely a word-for-word translation from one language to another when it comes to everyday questions about weights, measures and sizes, so it'll be a useful lesson for all of us.

We can also find out who's the tallest and shortest person here on italki. Be honest!