Reported Speech in English
Reported speech is the action of telling someone wat someone else said at a later time.
To do this, we need to make some changes to the sentence.
In this lesson, you’ll learn all about these changes and practise rewriting sentences.
How to use reported speech?
Reported speech is the action of telling someone what someone else said at a later time.
Statements
- Usually use ‘said’, but there are some other verbs.
- Change the tense (specific tense changes are below).
- Change the pronoun appropriately.
- Change the day/time.
Tense changes
- Present simple → Past simple
- Present continuous → Past continuous
- Present perfect → Past perfect
- Past simple → Past perfect
- Past continuous → Past perfect continuous
- Past perfect → Past perfect
- Future simple ‘will’ → Would
- Can → Could
No tense change: if the information is still true or refers to a future event.
Day/Time Changes
- Today → That day
- Tomorrow → The next day/the following day
- Yesterday → The day before/the previous day
- Last week/month/year → The week/month/year before
- Next week/month/year → The week/month/year after
- Tonight → That night
- Now → Then
- This → That
Questions
- Yes/No Questions: Use ‘if’ or ‘whether’, e.g. Do you like swimming? She asked me if I liked swimming.
- Wh- Questions: use the original wh- question word, e.g. Where is the museum? He asked me where the museum was.
Commands/Requests
- Use ‘told’ or ‘asked’ + pronoun + to + infinitive. E.g. Close the window. He told me to close the window.
Examples
She said she was going to visit her grandparents the day before.
He asked me whether I enjoyed the party.
The teacher told us to turn to page 50.
Practise
Rewrite the sentences into reported speech.
Common mistakes learners make
- Forgetting the tense change
- Not changing the pronoun
- Forgetting to shift the reported speech back to subject + verb from the question
Common mistakes learners make
- Forgetting the tense change
- Not changing the pronoun
- Forgetting to shift the reported speech back to subject + verb from the question