Page 120 - English Grammar - 6

If the reported verb is in present tense or future tense, the tense of the reported speech does
not change.
He says, “I will go to Agra today. (direct speech)
He said that he will go to Agra that day. (indirect speech)

They will say, “We have come.” (direct speech)
They will say that they have gone. (indirect speech)
Let’s Learn Reporting Questions into Indirect Speech
Read the given sentences.
They said to me, “Are you going to school,” (direct speech)
They asked me if I was going to school. (indirect speech)
She said to me, “Where do you live?” (direct speech)
She asked me where I lived. (indirect speech)

The reporting verb is changed to asked, inquired, demanded, etc. if the question sentence
begin with an auxiliary verb, we use if/whether. If the question sentence begins with a
question word, we used the same word in indirect speech. Other changes are made as
discussed above.

Practice Time 2

A. Change the speech of these sentences from direct to indirect.
1. The visitor said to me, “Do you live in this locality?”
2. Anjana said to her brother, “Why are you so upset today?”
3. The teacher said to the class, “Have you seen the rising sun?”

4. The scientist said to the farmer, “Can you show me the sample of the soil?”
5. My parents asked me, “Why am I late?”
Direct and Indirect Speech
6. The stranger said, “Where is the railway station?”

Listening & Speaking Time

The teacher will call three students A, B, and C together to the front of the class.
The student A will whisper a simple sentence of direct speech to student B and in
turn student B will speak it out to the class. The class will, then, decide whether the
sentence is correct as a direct speech or not. For the correct sentence, the student
A will get one mark. In a similar way, student B will whisper a sentence of direct
speech to student C who then will speak it out to the class. Again, the class will decide
whether the sentence is correct or not as a direct speech. The student B will get a
mark for the correct sentence. The same activity is repeated with students C and
A as a pair for which student C will get one mark if the sentence is correct. After
completing the exercise with the group of three students, the teacher will repeat the
same exercise with other students, too.

Collaboration
Learn with Fun

Work in pairs. One of you will write down five sentences in direct speech, and the other will
change these sentences into indirect speech. After both of you are done, cross-check each
other’s work for mistakes.
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