3 Grammar Rules for REPORTED SPEECH

Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on "Reported Speech".

Now, in this lesson, I'm going to look at two very specific cases of reported speech,

and I will expect that you already have the basic knowledge of how reported speech works.

If you don't, we have a lot of videos on engVid to get you prepared.

Benjamin has done a lesson on reported speech,

Ronnie has done one,

I've done one on "say" and "tell", so make sure

you have the basics of this before you jump to this lesson, or watch this lesson first

and then go back and look at those lessons for the basics.

So, today, I'm going to tell you how to report imperatives and instructions, and how to report

yes and no questions. So, imperatives. What's an imperative? It's a command:

"Stop", "Don't do that", "Don't go there", "Study a lot of English if you want to improve", whatever

it is. And instructions, you know, instructions, commands, these are very similar things. But

an instruction could be something you read on the back of a box of cookies, and how to

bake them, for example.

So, first, let's look at an affirmative imperative, an affirmative instruction or a command. So

if your teacher says: "Turn to page 209 in your textbook", how do you report this? Well,

when you're reporting something that is a command, that is an imperative, that starts

with a base verb like "go", "do", "play", "make", "turn", what you need to do after

your reporting verb: "He said", you actually need to use "to" plus the base verb. Okay?

So, here: "Turn to page 209." If I'm saying this and later you go to your friend, or your

friend says: "What did he say?" You said: "Oh, he said to turn to page 209." So, we

have: "Turn to page 209." When you're reporting, make sure you have "to" plus the base verb.

Okay? "He said to turn to page 209.", "He told us to turn to page 209." So, here we

have: "He told us to turn to page 209." And again, I'm going to assume that you already

have the basics of reporting structure, but here specifically, this is an instruction,

an imperative that you are reporting. So you have the base verb in the instruction, and

then you have "to" plus the base verb when you're reporting it.

Now, if you are reporting a negative command, for example: "Do not cross the street." Maybe

you are reading a sign that says: "Do not cross when red." You know, when the light

is red, for example. Well, how do you report a negative one? Very, very simple:

"The sign said not to cross the street." Okay? So,

here we have "to turn", here we have "not to cross".

So, an imperative will always be in the present. You will always hear:

"Stop", "Go", "Do", "Don't", okay? And because of that,

when you are reporting a negative imperative, all you

have to do is add "not" before "to" plus the base verb.

So: "The teacher said not to do this.", "The sign said not to do this."

Okay? So, again, if you are reading, let's say,

an instruction manual for your new digital camera or your new phone and it says, okay:

"Charge your phone before first use." So, before you use your phone, charge it for six

hours, for example.

So, say: -"Hey, what does the instruction manual say? My phone is not turning on."

-"Ah, the instruction manual says to charge it", "to charge", the instructions

say to charge for six hours before you use it for the first time.

Now, let's move on to yes/no questions. So, we have three yes/no questions.

"Do you need help?", "Is she here?", "Can you play guitar?"

So, first: "Do you need help?" Yes or no?

Present simple question. "He asked", and again, I'm going to give you a lot of different reporting

verbs, here, like: "He asked", "He wanted to know", "He was wondering", and I'm going

to assume that you already have this knowledge. "He asked me" or "He asked if I needed help."

And again, you can probably already see this formula, here, "if", "if", "if". So, when

you are reporting a yes/no question, in the reporting, you need to add an "if". Very simple.

For example, number two: -"Hey. Is she here?" -"He wanted to know if she was here." Okay?

And again, you notice that, you know, the question is: "Is she here?" The reporting

is: "He wanted to know if she was here." This is information that you would get in any basic

tutorial on reported speech, so make sure you have those basics.

And then, finally... I'm moving everywhere today. "Can you play guitar?" Here's the reporting:

"He was wondering if I could play guitar." So, all you hear... All you see all the time:

"if", "if", "if". "I want to know if", "He wanted to know if", "She asked me if". So,

any time you are reporting a yes or no question, make sure you are using an "if" in that report-okay?-when

you report that speech.

So, a lot of information today. And again, think of this as the bonus level of reported

speech, because obviously, you probably know the basics, and this is a little bit extra.

It's very specific situations that we are looking at in this video.

If you want to test your understanding of this material,

if you want to see if you can recognize how to, you know, transform an imperative or an instruction into reported speech,

how to change a yes/no question into reported speech

- check out the quiz on www.engvid.com.

And if you enjoyed this video: comment on it, like it, subscribe to the channel,

and check me out on Facebook and Twitter. Always pretty active over there.

I have my #randomenglish thing that I do pretty regularly.

So, check me out there. And until next time, thanks for clicking. Bye.