Reported Speech
When do we
use reported speech? Sometimes someone says a sentence, for example "I'm
going to the cinema tonight". Later, maybe we want to tell someone else
what the first person said.
Watch my
reported speech video:
Here's how it
works:
We use a
'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. (Click here for more about using 'say' and 'tell'.)
If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and
then the sentence:
- Direct speech: I like ice cream.
- Reported speech: She says she likes ice cream.
We don't
need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person'
from 'I' to 'she', for example. We also may need to change words like 'my' and
'your'.
But, if the reporting verb is in the
past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech: