Tag: reported speech

Reported Questions – learn this grammar
Reported Questions – learn this grammar

Reported speech is not easy but when it comes to reported questions students go mad. “There are so many rules to apply,” they whimper. “First, you have to change the question into an announcement and then you have to shift the tenses.” That was why I tried to simplify this procedure.

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In this post, you will find an infographic which simplifies reporting questions and then there is a worksheet with three exercises, where your students can practise this grammar.
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Reported questions – infographic

Display the infographic below and explain how it works.

The first two columns are important. The third and the fourth columns contain just examples.

If the students are asked to report a question, they start with the green column. Their first task is to find and destroy the words in this column. They look at the question they should report and search for one of the words. Once they find it, they destroy it and move to the right. They place the appropriate word from the orange column behind the subject and they are done.

They might need to make one more step, though. If the question does not start with a WH… word, they have to add IF or WHETHER at the beginning of the question.

reported-questions-web

Reported questions – worksheet

Print the following worksheet for your students. The pdf file contains the exercises and the key.

Reported questions worksheet

In the first exercise, students match the reported questions with the direct questions.

In the second exercise, students should report the questions.

In the third exercise, students transform the reported questions into direct questions.

More materials

If you liked this post, you may like two more posts on reported speech which I created. The first one is called Reported speech Backshifting and the other is called Reported speech.

Reported speech – backshifting
Reported speech – backshifting

Reported speech is often considered very difficult. Students fear the backshifting of the tenses, because they often do not know the tenses very well. If they struggle with the formation of the past tense, you cannot expect them to recognize it and backshift it to the past perfect tense. To avoid all this hassle I came up with a simple system to help students with the backshifting in reported speech.

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In this system students do not worry about the names of the tenses. They just learn a few key words and their reported counterparts, and then they are able to form the reported speech correctly.

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In this post you will find an infographic and several exercises to practise the rules outlined here.

Infographic

The following infographic shows the most frequent backshifting changes in reported speech.
reported-speech-web
If students see the word IS in direct speech, they should use WAS in the reported speech. Similarly, if they see COULD in the reported speech, they know that CAN is in the direct speech.

Remember to inform the students that reported speech is used after phrases like SHE SAID, HE TOLD ME, THEY INFORMED ME, etc. In other words, after the past tense of a verb that means to give information.

Exercises

In this part there is a worksheet for your students to use to practise the grammar.

Reported speech worksheet

You can print the worksheet with the exercises here.

Reported speech worksheet

In the first exercise, students should write the verb that will appear in reported speech.

In the second exercise, students complete the sentences with the correct options. All the sentences in this exercise are examples of reported speech.

In the third exercise, students should transform the sentences from exercise 2 into direct speech.

In the last exercise, students transform the direct speech into reported speech.

Reported speech grammar explanation
Reported speech grammar explanation

Many students struggle with reported speech. They feel that there are many rules they have to follow and they often get confused.

In this post I try to simplify the rules about the reported speech (or indirect speech) as much as possible. There is mind map describing the basic rules, a video and two games to practise the grammar.

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To put it simply, reported speech is used when you start a sentence with an expression like She said or He told me etc. Then you have to move the verbs backwards. Thus you change the present simple tense into past simple. You change the past continuous to past perfect continuous and so on (see the mind map for more details).

Reported speech – video

Watch the video and try to understand the explanation of the rules.

Reported speech – mind map

In this mind map I try to explain the basic rules.

First of all, reported speech happens after the reporting verbs (said, told, claimed etc.) in past tense. Then you have to move the original verb from the direct speech. The changes are depicted below.

The most common changes are depicted in the lower part of the mind map. If there are the verbs ARE, IS, WILL, CAN, HAVE or DO in the direct speech, just change them as shown and you do not have to do anything else.
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Reported speech infographic - the most common backshifting

The most common changes in reported speech.

Reported speech – games

The first game is called Hoop shoot. You will see a reported sentence and your task is to choose the correct sentence in direct speech. If you succeed you will be given the chance to score a basket.
Download the following pdf file and open it with Acrobat Reader, otherwise the game will not work.

The second game is a quiz. You will see the direct speech and your task is to complete the reported speech sentence correctly. If you pass the quiz you can play the game Indiara. All of these are in HTML5 so they should play on your mobiles without the slightest problem.

Reported Speech
Reported Speech

Reported speech is quite difficult. Students are often confused why the tenses change and what they mean. Here they will get a chance to understand the grammar point better.

Reported speech – video

First, they can watch the two videos explaining the usage of reported speech.

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The second explanation is based upon the Grammar challenge by BBC too. This time they explain the reported questions. Right click the link below and download the file. Then open it in Adobe Reader, otherwise it will not play.

Grammar challenge reported questions

Reported speech – mind map

Here you can see a mind map which tries to sum up all the grammar points into one picture.

reported speech mind map

Reported speech – online quiz

And as this site concentrates on games to practise grammar and vocabulary, here is another game to practise reported speech. In this game only the basic rules are practised and therefore the option that the direct speech remains as it is, is never correct in this game.

Reported Speech – En garde game

To play the game, click the download button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then open the downloaded file in Adobe reader (it is free) and it will work.

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