what is your brother?
what does your brother do?

What does your brother do?

👍🏼 

What’s...

I knew you would post this ))))

In fact "what is" is not a mistake and is a fully acceptable and correct version which I'm seeing around quite often.

It’s grammatically very correct and you’ll never hear anyone say WHAT IS... in real life. It’s not incorrect, it’s robotic.

But we don't speak here, we write. And it's for speakers to decided on how to say that - 'what is' or 'what's'. I just don't think you/we should use such strict enforcement to use contractions only.
There is nothing wrong when we write 'what is' or 'do not' or 'I have'. In fact, for beginners, it's even more helpful.
Makes sense?

Not to me. Considering that contractions are the norm and full forms are the exception in the real world, I feel that teaching full forms is a disservice to students since it takes considerable effort to unlearn something once it’s been assimilated and I consider full forms a bad habit. I’ve met lots of non-natives with an excellent command of English whose only setback is the fact that they don’t know how to use contractions and it makes their English sound that much less natural.

But hey, if you want to sound like a robot right from jump street, then be my guest. I already know English 😉

I was talking about writing, you are talking about sounding. Of course, when I speak I say 'I dont' or 'what's' because it's shorter. But writing full forms does not seem to be a big crime.
Since you told me about the contractions for the first time (back in April, I believe) I've been paying attention to see how native speakers write/use them. While in 70-80% of cases people indeed use contractions, I'm seeing 20-30% of cases/examples where people perfectly using full forms (here and there). Which makes me think it's not mandatory to use 100% contractions in writing. And using full forms in writing still seems to be natural.
Makes sense?

Nobody said that it was incorrect to use full forms - like you said, we use them “here and there.” But they should be considered the exception in both the spoken and written language and contractions should be given preference, especially by students of English.