Grade 8 Grammar Lesson 23 Reported speech (I)
What is the direct speech?
What is the indirect speech?
What are reporting verbs?
What is the difference between ‘say’ and ‘tell’?
Do we also change the things we report when changing a direct speech into an indirect speech?
If you want to tell somebody what this person said, you can do it in two ways:
You can repeat his words (direct speech):
You can say it in your own words (indirect or reported speech):
You use say as the reporting verb if you don’t mention the listener, but you use tell as the reporting verb if you mention the listener.
You may or may not use that. It is optional.
When we report what somebody said, we usually use past tense reporting verbs such as said, told, was/ were saying etc.
