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Reported Questions

This document discusses how to summarize reported speech in 3 sentences or less: 1) Reported speech involves restating what another person said indirectly rather than using their exact words (direct speech), and the structure changes depending on if it's a statement, question, or request. 2) When reporting statements, pronouns, place/time expressions, and verb tenses (backshifting to past tense) need to be checked and potentially modified. 3) Reported questions are transformed into indirect questions by using verbs like "ask" followed by a question word and clause with normal word order and necessary tense changes.

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Aleksandar Živić Gligorijević
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85 views2 pages

Reported Questions

This document discusses how to summarize reported speech in 3 sentences or less: 1) Reported speech involves restating what another person said indirectly rather than using their exact words (direct speech), and the structure changes depending on if it's a statement, question, or request. 2) When reporting statements, pronouns, place/time expressions, and verb tenses (backshifting to past tense) need to be checked and potentially modified. 3) Reported questions are transformed into indirect questions by using verbs like "ask" followed by a question word and clause with normal word order and necessary tense changes.

Uploaded by

Aleksandar Živić Gligorijević
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Reported speech

If we report what another person has said, we usually do not use the speakers exact
words (direct speech), but reported (indirect) speech. The structure is a little different
depending on whether you want to transform a statement, question or request. For the
statements, we need to check several thing before we want to use reported speech:
- pronouns
She says, My mom doesnt have time today. She says that her mum doesnt have time
today.
- place and time expressions
For place and time expressions you have to check whether place and time are the same in direct
and reported speech or not. For example:
James said: "I saw Caroline at the restaurant today." - James said that he had seen Caroline
there that day.
- tenses (backshift)
No backshift
Do not change the tense if the introductory clause is in Simple Present (e. g. He says). Note,
however, that you might have to change the form of the present tense verb (3rd person
singular).
He says, I speak English. He says that he speaks English.
Backshift
You must change the tense if the introductory clause is in Simple Past (e. g. He said). This is
called backshift.
He said, I am happy. He said that he was happy.




Reported questions

Same rules are applied to reported questions, in addition that reported questions needs
to be transformed into an indirect questions:
-with interrogative
He asked me: "Why don't you clean the house?" - He asked me why I didn't clean the house.
- without interrogative
She asked me: "Do you want ice-cream?" - She asked me whether I wanted ice-cream.
- question words: This type of question is reported by using "ask" (or another verb like "ask") +
question word + clause. The clause contains a question, with normal word order and necessary
tense change
"What is your name?" he asked me. - He asked me what my name was.

The policman said to the boy, "Where do you live?" - The policeman asked the boy where
he lived.

Verbs which are in infinitive are unchanged when using reported speech:

She asked me: "Where do you want to go?" - She asked me where I wanted to go.

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