Grammar: Learn to use REPORTED SPEECH in English

Hi. My name's Ronnie. I'm going to teach you some very, very simple reported speech things.

If you don't know what reported speech is, welcome to the confusing word... World of

confusing reported speech and words. Reported speech, maybe when you study it in your class,

the teacher or whoever, will call it indirect speech. It's the same. So, indirect speech

or reported speech is exactly the same. Yay. Why or how do we use reported speech? Good

question. We use this to report or to write down what somebody has said.

If somebody has told you something, this is going to be a quote. A "quote" means you copy

the person's words exactly. You have to be really careful not to change their words.

Reported speech or indirect speech is usually only used for writing. So, we don't really

have to worry about all of these crazy rules when we speak. Whew, thank god. So, we're

just going to go through the past, the present, and the future. We're going to change quoted

speech into reported speech. This little chart will help you. If you want to copy down this

chart, take a picture of the chart, I guarantee it will make your reported speech grammar

class or grammar learning amazing. Check it out.

So, in the present tense, we have two tenses, we have present simple or simple present and

we have present continuous. As an example: "She eats lunch." is present simple. This

is something she does every day. So if I wanted to report or write down this, write this down,

I would use reported speech. So: "She eats lunch." My present simple, what I'm going

to do is I'm going to take my verb "eats", and change it to past simple. So, present

simple verb we're going to change to past simple. I would say: "She said she ate lunch."

In this sentence, "eat" is present simple; in the reported speech, "ate" is my past simple.

So, present simple changes to past simple in reported speech.

If I have a present continuous example, this means something the person is doing now...

For example: "He is painting." So he's an artist, he's got a paint brush and some paint,

and he's painting. We have to change this to past continuous. So, if we have "is painting",

all we have to do to make this past continuous is change it to "was painting". Present continuous

to past continuous, the only thing that changes is our "to be" verb changes from present to

past. "He said he was painting."

Moving right along. Or moving back, back to the future. We have present perfect. An example

of a present perfect sentence: "He", sorry. "They had a shower." It's about time; they

smell a lot. So, if we wanted to report this or write this down, we would say... Oh, he

said... He... Sorry: "They have had". This is strange, "have had". Check this out. Present

perfect is going to change to past perfect. So: "They have had", if we change it to past

perfect, we have to change it to "had had". Ronnie, "had had"? Is that true? Yes. This

is right. So, present perfect, "have had", changes to "had" plus PP: "had had". So: "They

said they had had a shower." And it's about time, because they're pretty smelly.

The next one: past simple. For example: "He took my photo." In this sentence, your verb

is "took". This is a past. So, past simple, present perfect, both of these we have to

change to, again, past perfect. So we're going to change this to:

"They said he had taken my photo."

And the last one, past perfect, don't change it. It's cool. It's already done. Past perfect

you have to change to past perfect, so you don't have to change the grammar in this sentence.

-"They had had a dog." -"They said they had had"-that's crazy again, but it's true-"a

dog." So, if you have a past sentence, present perfect, simple past, or past perfect, all

of these are going to be changed to past perfect. That's easier. "Had" plus the past participle.

You okay?

Moving on to the future. We have two future tenses in English. Future simple or simple

future, which is going to be "will", and we have future "going to". Simple future: "She

will go." Future "going to": "They are going to play football with their new shoes." Do

you play football? Future simple: "She will go", all we're going to do is change the verb

or the modal "will" to "would". So it's going to change to: "She would go". That's cool.

"Will" changes to "would". That's easy.

"They are going to play football." This is future "going to". To make this guy reported

speech, all we're going to do is change "are" to "were" or "was". Oh, do you know when to

use "was" and when to use "were"? If it's "I", we use "was". If it's "he", we use "was",

and "she" we use "was", and if it's "it". If it's "were", we use "they" and "we".

Reported speech can be really, really difficult and confusing, but if you can remember one,

two, three, four, five easy ways to get this down, you're going to have no problem reporting

what somebody has told you. Take care, and report carefully.