Change Direct Speech to Indirect Speech (Part-1)

Change direct speech to indirect speech

If you are primary learner and don’t know what Narration is, the article is for you. Here you will find not only the rules of changing narration but also easy instructions. You must read the tutorial attentively. By reading this article, you will have been able to learn Narration, to change direct speech to indirect speech.

When we report something to anybody we can use two forms of speech. Suppose, your friend Rony tells you that he is busy. He tells you “I am busy.” But when you inform this to your another friend or anybody else, you might say in two ways directly or indirectly.


Directly: Rony said to me, “I am busy.’ [ you said as he told you]
Indirectly: Rony said that he (Rony) was busy. [you said in your own way]
In indirect speech you report a person’s talking/speech to another person in your own way. If your father says you that he is going to market, Your father says:
“I (your father) am going to market”
But when you inform this speech/talking to your mother, you say:
Directly: Father said, “I am going to market”
Indirectly: Father said that he was going to market.

So Narration is some grammatical rules of changing direct speech to indirect speech. Think you have probably understood what narration is. Now read some rules of changing direct speech to indirect speech.

There are two kinds of speech, they are 1) Direct Speech and  2) Indirect Speech.
Direct Speech: Father said, “I am going to market”
In the above sentence “Father said” is “Reporting verb” and “I am going to market” is “Reported Speech”.
Indirect Speech: Father said thathe was going to market.
Here the subject of reported speech “I” changed to “he” and tense changed to “past tense” you we change  Subject, Pronoun and Tense of reported speech. Subject and Pronoun are changed by meaning but there are some rules of changing Tense.
Tense changes in following ways:


If Reporting Verb is in
Reported speech
Present or Future Tense
You need not change the tense of Reported Speech.
Past Tense
The tense of Reported Speech changes to previous tense:
If direct is in Present tense, indirect will be Past tense
Direct speech
Indirect Speech
Present Indefinite
Past Indefinite
Present Continuous
Past Continuous
Present Perfect
Past Perfect
Present Perfect Cont.
Past Perfect Continuous
If direct is in Past tense, indirect will be Past Perfect tense
Past Indefinite
Past Perfect
Past Continuous
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Perfect
Past Perfect
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Perfect Continuous
In Future tense
Shall
Should
Will
Would

Now you will be able to change the tense of reported speech when you change direct speech to indirect speech. In next post you will find other sentence structure wise rules. You may also want to read Direct Speech and Indirect Speech exercises.


Incoming search items:
direct speech and indirect speech
direct speech to indirect speech
indirect speech to direct speech
Change speech
How to change direct speech to indirect speech