Reported Speech

Grammar

Reported Speech

What did the teacher sat? r

Start

ÍNDICE

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How is it used? Present

What is it?

How is it used? Others

Time Expressions

Reported Requests

Reported Questions

Lista / procesos

Sección

Pregunta interactiva

Vídeo

Datos relevantes

Conclusiones

Texto + iconos

Cierre

Timeline

What is it?

Sometimes someone says a sentence, for example "I'm going to the cinema tonight". Later, maybe we want to tell someone else what the first person said.

How is it used?

We use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence: Direct speech: I like ice cream. Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream. We don't need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person' from 'I' to 'she', for example. We also may need to change words like 'my' and 'your'. (As I'm sure you know, often, we can choose if we want to use 'that' or not in English. I've put it in brackets () to show that it's optional. It's exactly the same if you use 'that' or if you don't use 'that'.) But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech: Direct speech: I like ice cream. Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

How is it used?

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech: Direct speech: I like ice cream. Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

Reported Questions

Direct speech: Where do you live? It''s not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. Direct speech: Where do you live? Reported speech: She asked me where I lived. Direct speech: Where is Julie? Reported speech: She asked me where Julie was. The direct question is the present simple of 'be'. We make the question form of the present simple of be by inverting (changing the position of) the subject and verb. So, we need to change them back before putting the verb into the past simple.

Reported Requests

Direct speech: Close the window, please Or: Could you close the window please? Or: Would you mind closing the window please? All of these requests mean the same thing, so we don't need to report every word when we tell another person about it. We simply use 'ask me + to + infinitive': Reported speech: She asked me to close the window.

Time Expressions with Reported Speech

Sometimes when we change direct speech into reported speech we have to change time expressions too. We don't always have to do this, however. It depends on when we heard the direct speech and when we say the reported speech.

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