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    Reported Speech

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    lotusk kkk
    The document discusses direct speech and indirect speech. Direct speech uses quotation marks to report what someone said verbatim. Indirect speech reports what someone said without using their exact words or quotation marks. When changing direct speech to indirect speech, verb tenses are typically changed one step back (e.g. from present to past) and interrogative forms are changed to affirmative forms. Questions, orders, and requests are also changed according to these rules when converting to indirect speech.

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    Reported Speech

    Uploaded by

    lotusk kkk
    75 views8 pages
    The document discusses direct speech and indirect speech. Direct speech uses quotation marks to report what someone said verbatim. Indirect speech reports what someone said without using their exact words or quotation marks. When changing direct speech to indirect speech, verb tenses are typically changed one step back (e.g. from present to past) and interrogative forms are changed to affirmative forms. Questions, orders, and requests are also changed according to these rules when converting to indirect speech.

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    Reported speech

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    The document discusses direct speech and indirect speech. Direct speech uses quotation marks to report what someone said verbatim. Indirect speech reports what someone said without using their exact words or quotation marks. When changing direct speech to indirect speech, verb tenses are typically changed one step back (e.g. from present to past) and interrogative forms are changed to affirmative forms. Questions, orders, and requests are also changed according to these rules when converting to indirect speech.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    75 views8 pages

    Reported Speech

    Uploaded by

    lotusk kkk
    The document discusses direct speech and indirect speech. Direct speech uses quotation marks to report what someone said verbatim. Indirect speech reports what someone said without using their exact words or quotation marks. When changing direct speech to indirect speech, verb tenses are typically changed one step back (e.g. from present to past) and interrogative forms are changed to affirmative forms. Questions, orders, and requests are also changed according to these rules when converting to indirect speech.

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    Direct Speech

    When we want to describe what someone said, one option is to use direct speech. We
    use direct speech when we simply repeat what someone says, putting the phrase
    between speech marks:

     Paul came in and said, “I’m really hungry.”


    It is very common to see direct speech used in books or in a newspaper article. For
    example:

     The local MP said, “We plan to make this city a safer place for everyone.”
    As you can see, with direct speech it is common to use the verb ‘to say’ (‘said’ in the
    past). But you can also find other verbs used to indicate direct speech such as ‘ask’,
    ‘reply’, and ‘shout’. For example:

     When Mrs Diaz opened the door, I asked, “Have you seen Lee?”
     She replied, “No, I haven’t seen him since lunchtime.”
     The boss was angry and shouted, “Why isn’t he here? He hasn’t finished that
    report yet!”
    Indirect Speech
    When we want to report what someone said without speech marks and without
    necessarily using exactly the same words, we can use indirect speech (also called
    reported speech). For example:

     Direct speech: “We’re quite cold in here.”


     Indirect speech: They say (that) they’re cold.
    When we report what someone says in the present simple, as in the above sentence, we
    normally don’t change the tense, we simply change the subject. However, when we
    report things in the past, we usually change the tense by moving it one step back. For
    example, in the following sentence the present simple becomes the past simple in
    indirect speech:

     Direct speech:  “I have a new car.”


     Indirect speech: He said he had a new car.
    All the other tenses follow a similar change in indirect speech. Here is an example for all
    the main tenses:

    The same rule of moving the tenses one step back also applies to modal
    verbs. For example:
    Reporting Questions

    When you report a question you need to change the interrogative form into an affirmative
    sentence, putting the verb tense one step back, as with normal reported speech.

    There are two types of questions that we can report – questions that have a yes/no response, and
    questions that begin with a question word like ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘who’ etc. When we report a
    yes/no question, we use ‘if’. For example:

     Direct speech: “Do they live here?”


     Indirect speech: You asked me if they lived here.
    As you can see, in the reported version of the question, ‘do’ is eliminated because it is no longer
    a question, and the verb ‘live’ becomes ‘lived’.

    For questions starting with question words like ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘who’, etc., we report the
    question using the question word but change the interrogative form to the affirmative form. For
    example:

     Direct speech: “Where do they live?”


     Indirect speech: You asked me  where they lived.
     Direct speech: “When are you leaving?”
     Indirect speech: He asked us when we were leaving.
     Direct speech: “How will they get here?”
     Indirect speech: She asked me  how they would get  here.
    When we report a question we normally use the verb ‘ask’. As with the verb ‘to tell’, the verb ‘to
    ask’ is normally followed by an object pronoun, though it is possible to omit it.

    Reporting Orders and Requests

    When you give someone an order, you use the imperative form, which means using just the verb
    without a subject. For example:

     “Call  me back later.”


     “Have  a seat.”
     “Don’t do  that!”
    To report an order we use ‘tell’ and the infinitive of the verb. For example:

     You told me  to call  you back later.


     He told me  to have  a seat.
     She told us  not to do  that.
    When you make a request, you normally use words like ‘can’, ‘could’, or ‘will’. For
    example:

     “Could you call me back later?”

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