Direct & Indirect Speech

What this lesson covers

Direct & Indirect Speech is a 10-part Class 7 English lesson. Each part makes one point and then hands over to the next, so it can be read in a sitting or picked up again at the part you stopped on. It defines the idea in plain words before using it, works through an example step by step, breaks the topic into its parts and compares them, shows where it is used outside the textbook, names the mistakes that cost marks in an exam, ends with a recap of what to remember.

How it begins

Direct speech gives the exact words in quotation marks. Indirect speech reports them. "I have finished," she said. She said that she had finished.Three things changed: the pronoun, the tense, and the punctuation. Why the distinction is more than grammar: quotation marks are a promise that these are the exact words. Reporting lets you paraphrase, and therefore lets you change the meaning.

The 10 parts

1. Quoting versus reporting
2. The backshift
3. When you do NOT backshift
4. Time and place shifts
5. Questions, commands and requests
6. Choosing the reporting verb
7. Where reported speech is used
8. Where it usually goes wrong
9. What to remember
10. Watch one worked through