Guia Reported Speech Cuarto Año
Guia Reported Speech Cuarto Año
Guia Reported Speech Cuarto Año
Reported Statements
When do we use reported speech? 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.
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.
past I had taken English lessons She said (that) she had taken English lessons
perfect* before before.
would* I would help, but… She said (that) she would help but...
could* I could swim when I was four She said (that) she could swim when she was four.
should* I should call my mother She said (that) she should call her mother
might* I might be late She said (that) she might be late
* doesn't change.
Reported Questions
So now you have no problem with making reported speech from positive and negative sentences. But
how about questions?
In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the
question Word (‘wh’). 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. A
bit confusing? Maybe this example will help:
Do you see how I made it? The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple
question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past
simple.
Another example:
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.
Here are some more examples:
Direct Question Reported Question
Where is the Post Office,
She asked me where the Post Office was.
please?
What are you doing? She asked me what I was doing.
Who was that fantastic man? She asked me who that fantastic man had been.
So much for 'wh' questions. But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any
question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if or whether':
To change questions (which can be answered in yes or no) into indirect speech, word “if” or “whether”
is used before the question in indirect speech. Rules for change in tense of question sentences are same
as for change in normal tenses in indirect speech but sentence will not start with the auxiliary verb of
the tense. The word “that” is not used between reporting verb and reported speech as conjunction in
indirect speech for question sentence. Question mark is not used in indirect speech.
Reported Requests
There's more! What if someone asks you to do something (in a polite way)? For example:
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 Orders
And finally, how about if someone doesn't ask so politely? We can call this an 'order' in English, when
someone tells you very directly to do something. For example:
In fact, we make this into reported speech in the same way as a request. We just use 'tell' instead of
'ask':