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

Tense changes

No tense change: if the information is still true or refers to a future event.

Day/Time Changes

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.

1. She said she was going to visit her grandparents the day before.

2. He asked me whether I enjoyed the party.

3. The teacher told us to turn to page 50.

Rewrite the sentences into reported speech.

Forgetting the tense change
Not changing the pronoun
Forgetting to shift the reported speech back to subject + verb from the question

Forgetting the tense change
Not changing the pronoun
Forgetting to shift the reported speech back to subject + verb from the question

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