Level: Intermediate - Grammar Topic: Reported speech

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Use

We use reported speech to talk about what another person said in the past.

Form

When we use reported speech we change the tense to further in the past. It is also

necessary to change the subject. For example:

Direct speech: I am living in Germany. (Present continuous)

Reported speech: He said he was living in Germany. (Past Continuous)

The following table shows how tenses change.

Present simple Past simple

Present continuous Past continuous Past simple Past perfect

Past continuous Past perfect continuous

Present prefect Pas perfect Present prefect continuous Past perfect continuous

will would can could

Be careful!

You also have to change any references to time. The conversion depends on when

you are reporting the sentence in relation to when it was said. If can always use a

specific date/day for example: the25th June/Monday.

Now Then/at that time

Today That day Yesterday The previous day/the day before

Last night The night before

Last week The week before Tomorrow The following day

Level: Intermediate - Grammar Topic: Reported speech

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Activities!

Activity 1.

The whisper game.

This is a very simple game. One student whispers a sentence to another student.

Student B then whispers the sentence using reported speech to Student C who then

tells student A to see if the sentence is correct

Student A whispers I like to play football to student B

Student B whispers He said he liked to play football to student C who then repeats

the sentence to student A to see if its correct.

b. You can put a time limit on students and give them a challenge for example; How

many whispers can you do in 2 minutes?

Activity 2.

The reporter game.

Choose one person in the class to be a reporter and one person to be a news anchor.

The other students must create a character, the more creative the better; they could

be real people or totally made up.

Give students a couple of minutes to create their personality. The reporter then must

interview each student (you can have 2 reporters if you have a large class). The

reporter can ask anything they want. After they have finished interviewing everybody

they must give a report back to the news anchor in the studio (using reported speech).

The news anchor must give the reporter an introduction and then conduct an

interview with him.

Before you start, get students to brainstorm what the event is, for example: The

Oscars, The Grammys, A UN meeting, it could be anything!