THE BASICS OF CHANGING DIRECT TO INDIRECT SPEECH

 In reporting an idea or a message using the exact words of the speaker, use direct speech; However, in reporting an idea or a message using your own words, use indirect speech. But what is the most appropriate way to change direct speech to indirect?

Sentences in the indirect speech are already free of the quotation marks and must always end with a period.

The sentence inside the quotation mark is called the REPORTED SPEECH. When the verb in the reported speech is in the present tense, change it into its simple past tense when changing into indirect. 

In the sentence above, "like" is the verb in the reported speech and "like" is also present. In changing it to indirect "like" becomes "liked".

YOUR TURN

Directions: Change the given direct speech into indirect.

1. Direct: Melissa said, "I eat bread for breakfast."

    Indirect: _________________________

If the verb in the reported speech is in the past tense, in this case, "met" , change it into the past perfect tense which is "had met".

So, what is really the form of a past perfect tense? Simple: had +verb pp. Meaning had plus the past participle of the verb. The past participle form of the verb is generally the third column in conjugating verbs.

The verbs in the past participle column are the verbs to pair with had to form the past perfect tense of the verb. They would look like this: had liked; had talked; had eaten; had sung.

Notice also the time indicator in the example above; yesterday is changed to the previous day in the indirect form. This means that time expressions also change when the statement is transformed into indirect.

Be reminded of these changes:

now - then

tomorrow - the next day

today - that day

yesterday - that previous day

tonight - that night

YOUR TURN

Directions: Change the given direct speech into indirect.

2. Direct: Melissa said, "Robert drank the milk in the 

               fridge last night."

    Indirect: _________________________

This means that not everything in the reported speech has to be changed when you want to use the indirect speech. This one is an example. 

There is no need to change "All people have equal rights" because that is a universal truth. That is something everyone knows and should be known.

It would sound unnatural if you insist on changing it: ‘He said that all people had equal rights.’ You cannot change that because even when the speaker said that in the past, that idea is still true even after she said it.

YOUR TURN

Directions: Change the given direct speech into indirect.

3. Direct: Melissa said, "We are all created equal."

    Indirect: _________________________

This part could be tricky. You have to make sure that the pronouns used  refer to the correct antecedent. Antecedents are what pronouns refer to.

Let us examine the sentence above: "John told Mary that he had told her that they do not have money." It is very important that you do not interchange the pronouns. It should also be taken into consideration that some names do not suggest gender anymore so it is wise to clarify it.

YOUR TURN

Directions: Change the given direct speech into indirect.

4. Direct: Melissa told Pedro, "I needed you to listen 

    to me last night."

    Indirect: _________________________

The reporting verb refers to the verb before the reported speech or outside the reported speech; the verb outside the quotation marks. In the sentence above -  She says, "I will come." - "says" is the reporting verb. When the reporting verb is in the present or future tense, there is no need to change the tense of the verb in the reported speech. In the example above, the only changes made were the pronoun "I to she" and the addition of the word "that".

YOUR TURN

Directions: Change the given direct speech into indirect.

5. Direct: Melissa says, "Pedro and I will be leaving 

               soon."

    Indirect: _________________________

You can also watch this video. 

Originally published at jeanillec.blogspot.com

in 2020

References:

Direct to indirect speech: General rules. (9 February 2016). Retrieved from

https://www.englishgrammar.org/direct-indirect-speech-general-rules/

Cogtas, J. (3 March 2019). How to change direct to indirect speech. Retrieved form

https://jeanillec.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-to-change-direct-to-indirect-speech.html