The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word.

In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. How can we make the reported speech here? So now you have no problem with making reported speech from positive and negative sentences. Click here for a list of all the reported speech exercises. Reported speech: She said (that) the sky is/was blue.Ĭlick here for a mixed tense exercise about practise reported statements.Occasionally, we don't need to change the present tense into the past if the information in direct speech is still true (but this is only for things which are general facts, and even then usually we like to change the tense): She said (that) she must study at the weekend OR She said she had to study at the weekend She said (that) she should call her mother She said (that) she could swim when she was four. She said (that) she could speak perfect English. She said (that) she had taken English lessons before. She said (that) she had been walking along the street.

She said (that) she was living in London.

Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

It's exactly the same if you use 'that' or if you don't use 'that'.)īut, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech: I've put it in brackets () to show that it's optional. (As I'm sure you know, often, we can choose if we want to use 'that' or not in English. We also may need to change words like 'my' and 'your'. We don't need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person' from 'I' to 'she', for example.

Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

We just put 'she says' and then the sentence: ( Click here for more about using 'say' and 'tell'.) If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. Later, maybe we want to tell someone else what the first person said. When do we use reported speech? Sometimes someone says a sentence, for example 'I'm going to the cinema tonight'. Click here to download this explanation in PDF. Click here for a list of reported speech exercises.

Reported speech commands exercises pdf