Indirect Speech

Indirect speech

Defenition :

Indirect speech (sometimes called reported speech), doesn't use quotation marks to enclose what the person said and it doesn't have to be word for word.
When reporting speech the tense usually changes. This is because when we use reported speech, we are usually talking about a time in the past (because obviously the person who spoke originally spoke in the past). The verbs therefore usually have to be in the past too.


Simple past
( S + V2 )
example : He Asked that  I worked hard

Past Continous
( S + was , were + Ving )

Past perfect continous
( S + had + been + Ving )

Past Perfect
( S + had + V3 )

Future
( S + was , were + V1 )

Past Simple : She said it was cold

Past Continous : She said she was teaching English online

Past Perfect Simple : She said she had been on the web ince 1999

Past Perfect Continous : She said she had been teaching English for seven years

Past Perfect : She said she had taught online yesterday

Past Perfect Continous : She said she had been teaching earlier

Past Perfect : No change => She said the lesson had already started when he arrived

Past Perfect Continous : No change => She said she'd already been teaching for five minutes

Modal verb forms also sometime change :

Would -> She said would teach english online tomorrow
Could -> She said she could teach english online
Had to -> She said she had to have a computer to teach english online
Should -> She asked what we should learn today
Might -> She asked if she might open a new browser

Indirect Speech (not exact)

She said next week's lesson will be on reported speech

Time Change

If the reported sentence contains an expression of time, you must change it to fit in with the time of reporting.
For example we need to change words like here and yesterday if they have different meanings at the time and place of reporting.

She said yesterday's lesson was on presentations.
or
She said yesterday's lesson would be on presentations.

Expressions of time if reported on a different day

Direct Indirect

this (evening) › that (evening)
today › yesterday ...
these (days) ›                                          those (days)
now › then
(a week) ago ›                                        (a week) before
last weekend › the weekend before last / the previous weekend
here › there
next (week) › the following (week)
tomorrow ›                                            the next/following day

In addition if you report something that someone said in a different place to where you heard it you must change the place (here) to the place (there).

Reported Questions

So now you have no problem with making reported speech from positive and negative sentences. But how about questions?
Direct speech: "Where do you live?"
How can we make the reported speech here?

In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. Confusing? Sorry, maybe this example will help:
Direct speech: "Where do you live?"
Reported speech: She asked me where I lived.

Do you see how I made it? The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past simple.

Another example:
Direct speech: "where is Julie?"
Reported speech: She asked me where Julie was.
The direct question is the present simple of 'be'. We make the question form of the present simple of be by inverting (changing the position of) the subject and verb. So, we need to change them back before putting the verb into the past simple.
Here are some more examples:

Direct Question Reported Question

“Where is the Post Office, please?” She asked me where the Post Office was.
“What are you doing?” She asked me what I was doing.
“Who was that fantastic man?” She asked me who that fantastic man had been.

So much for 'wh' questions. But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if':
Direct speech: "Do you like chocolate?"
Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

Sumber :

http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/reportedspeech.html#sthash.ll5xPCqO.dpuf

http://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/reported-speech.html