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Reported Speech Explanation

Reported speech is used to talk about what others have said without using their exact words. It involves changing verbs and pronouns to be consistent with the new subject. For example, direct speech would be "I'm going to the cinema", whereas the reported version is "He says he is going to the cinema." Other changes include changing possessive adjectives like "my" to match the new subject. Reported speech is useful for summarizing or retelling a conversation indirectly.

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Luz Dayanara Saldana Sarmiento
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376 views1 page

Reported Speech Explanation

Reported speech is used to talk about what others have said without using their exact words. It involves changing verbs and pronouns to be consistent with the new subject. For example, direct speech would be "I'm going to the cinema", whereas the reported version is "He says he is going to the cinema." Other changes include changing possessive adjectives like "my" to match the new subject. Reported speech is useful for summarizing or retelling a conversation indirectly.

Uploaded by

Luz Dayanara Saldana Sarmiento
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Reported Speech (Indirect Speech)

Reported speech is the form we use to speak about what others tell us.

 If we report what another person has said, we usually do not use the speaker’s exact words (direct speech), but
reported (indirect) speech.
Direct Speech / Quoted Speech Indirect Speech / Reported speech

Saying exactly what someone has said is called Indirect speech (sometimes called reported
direct speech (sometimes called quoted speech), doesn't use quotation marks to sum up
speech) what a person said and it doesn't have to be
word for word.
Here what a person says appears within
quotation marks ("...") and should be word for For example:
word.
Direct speech Indirect speech
For example: "I'm going to the He says he is going
cinema", he says. to the cinema.
She says, "Today's lesson is on presentations." Tom says, "I enjoy Tom says that he
watching action enjoys watching
movies." action movies.

 You can use the present simple in reported speech if you want to say that something is still true i.e. my name has
always been and will always be Lynne so:

Direct speech Indirect speech

"My name is She says her


Lynne", she says. name is Lynne.

More examples:

 Teacher: We're going to work on the reported speech. Please turn to page 121 in your book.

Student 1: I can't understand. What are we supposed to do?

Student 2: The teacher says we are going to work on the reported speech on page 121.

 Tom: I think this is a great idea!

Peter: Andy, I didn't understand.

Andy: Tom tells us he thinks it's a good idea

 Notice that when we report what someone says we need to change the pronoun and the verb to match the
subject of the sentence.

For example:

If your friend tells you:

I want to study
medicine

You would have to report it by saying:

He tells me that he wants to study medicine

 Also, possessive adjectives need to be changed in order to match the initial meaning of the sentence.
For example:

Becomes
“I’m wearing my favorite t-shirt” says Candace. Candace says that she is wearing her favorite t-shirt.

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