We’ll explain reported speech or indirect speech grammar rules with examples. Learn how to change tenses, pronouns, and time expressions when converting direct to indirect speech for IELTS.
Hey there! Let's learn about reported speech or indirect speech in English grammar. It's used to report what someone said without quoting them directly.
Rules Of Speech
The main rules are: change tense, pronoun, time expression, and remove quotation marks. For example: Daniel said, "I live in Paris." Susan said Daniel lives in Paris.
Changes In Tense Form
Tense changes: 'present simple' to 'past simple.' "I live in Paris" to 'He said he lived in Paris.' 'Present continuous' to 'past continuous.' Time expressions change: 'today' to 'that day.'
Changes In Pronoun Form
Pronouns change: 'I' to 'he/she,' 'my' to 'his/her.' Remove quotation marks and use the conjunction 'that.' Backshift time expressions: 'now' to 'then,' 'tomorrow to 'the next/following day.'
Changes In Modal Verb Form
For modal verbs like can, must, may - the modal verb itself doesn't change. "I can swim" to 'She said she could swim.' But a must change is there to ‘had to.’ Exceptions: 'said,' 'told stay in past tense.'
Changes In Order
Reported questions have the sentence order changed. "Where do you live?" to She asked me where I lived. Remove the question mark and change the tense. Same for commands and requests.
Key Takeaway
That covers the main rules for reported speech! Practice converting dialogues from direct to indirect speech. Check for tense, pronoun, and time expression changes.
Check out more about grammar and its different use cases in IELTS with us.