Download Diapositiva 1 - IES Las Lagunas

“I” changes to “he”
Reported Speech
in English
The idea of Reported Speech is that of re-telling other
people´s converstaions. The usual sceneario is two people having a
conversation and another person saying what those two people have
said. Of course, we can be one of the two people in the conversation,
but to start out, we are going to suppose we are only retelling other
people´s words.
Considering what has been explained before, we can
understand the “Reported Speech” idea because “to report” means to
“to explain/inform” and “speech” is the words that are said. Thus,
“reported speech” is “original speech” that is “reported”, that is,
“explained” or “informed” to somebody else.
So we need an original sentence from a dialogue, which we
will transform. However, before we do that, we have to take some
things into due consideration.
First of all, we have to shift all the PRONOUNS into the 3rd Person
Secondly, the VERBS have to go back to the nearest PAST tense
available
Finally, there are a series of SELECTED WORDS which have to be
changed
STATEMENTS: All types of Affirmative and Negative sentences
QUESTIONS: There are two types of questions:
YES-NO Questions: You answer with a “Yes” or a “No”
WH-WORD Questions: You give information on the WHWord
ORDERS / SUGGESTIONS: Here we mainly deal with
IMPERATIVES
Firstly, you are going to learn how to transform an original sentence
and, after that, we will have a detailed view on the different types of
original sentences.
Let´s start out with this sentence:
I can´t deal with your problem as you have not given me details
Fisrt, we are going to mark out the PRONOUNS…
And now we should do the same thing with the VERBS
We will forget about the SELECTED WORDS till later
Before we proceed any further, let us have a look at the…
S
I
N
G
U
L
A
R
P
L
U
R
A
L
SUBJECTS
OBJECTS
POSS. ADJS.
POSS. PRONS.
REFLEXIVES
I
ME
MY
MINE
MYSELF
2nd P
YOU
YOU
YOUR
YOURS
3rd P
SHE
HER
HER
HERS
3rd P
HE
HIM
HIS
HIS
HIMSELF
3rd P
IT
IT
ITS
ITS
ITSELF
1st P
WE
US
OUR
OURS
2nd P
YOU
YOU
YOUR
YOURS
YOURSELVES
THEM
THEIR
THEIRS
THEMSELVES
1st P
3rd P THEY
YOURSELF
HERSELF
OURSELVES
Now, the next step is to shift the Pronouns to the 3rd Person…
He
I can´t deal with
your
her problem as she
you have not given him
me details
Then, we will push the verbs to the nearest Past…
He couldn´t
can´t deal with her problem as she hadn´t
haven´t given him any details
As we said before, there is a list of SELECTED WORDS which can
also be transformed, but that will be later on…
The way to transform an Original Sentence is indicating three parts:
1. The person who is reporting the conversation
2. The reporting Verb according to the type of Original Sentence
3. The reporting Connector according to the type of Original Sentence
Here we are going to deal with Statements.
Let´s see those three parts:
1. The person who is reporting the conversation
It depends on the people who are in the dialogue.
2. The reporting Verb in Statements is…
Any SPEECH verb such as SAY, TELL, EXPLAIN, MUTTER, EXPRESS,
REPLY…
3. The reporting Connector in Statements is…
THAT (you can omit this Connector)
The two main Reporting Verbs are SAY and TELL. Let´s see their
differences…
SAY has got two typical structures…
SAY + THAT => He said that…
SAY + TO + Person + THAT => He said TO me that…
TELL has only got ONE structure
TELL + Person + THAT => He told me that
And now an example…
Student A (a boy)
“I can´t study the exercises although the teacher wants me to.”
Student B (a girl)
“Yes, I know it. We are always hurrying trying to do his tasks.”
The transformation would go as follows…
Student A said that he couldn´t study the exercises although the
teacher wanted him to. Student B replied that she knew it and told
Student A that they were always hurrying trying to do his tasks.
We can have two different types of questions:
a. Yes/No Questions
b. Wh-Word Questions
The three parts in Questions are the same except for the Connector…
1. The person who is reporting the conversation
It depends on the people who are in the dialogue.
2. The reporting Verb in Questions is…
Any QUESTION verb such as ASK, WONDER, WANT TO KNOW,
DEMAND, INQUIRE…
The Connector varies according to the type of question…
Yes/No Questions => CONNECTOR is
or
WH-Word Questions => CONNECTOR is… The WH-Word itself
And now an example…
Yes/No Questions
The little girl:
“Will you give me my birthday presents?”
The little girl asked if/whether he would give her her birthday presents.
The little girl´s father:
WH-Word
Questions
“Why do you want to know?”
The little girl´s father asked why she wanted to know.
There are two dangers in the reporting of questions:
1. When we report a question, we cannot retain the question structure
AUX + SUBJECT + VERB + COMPLEMENT? because it is NOT
a question anymore…
Can you explain that to me?
He asked if she could explain that to her.
2. You have to be very careful with the translation into Spanish. In
Spanish sentences such as…
Me preguntó QUE SI yo sabía eso
Me preguntó SI yo sabía eso
are perfectly right, but in English you CANNOT say THAT when
reporting questions because it is a Connector only for Statements…
She asked me if I knew that
She asked me THAT if I knew that
The three parts in Orders/Suggestions are:
1. The person who is reporting the conversation
It depends on the people who are in the dialogue.
2. The reporting Verb in Orders/Suggestions is…
Any ORDER/SUGGESTION verb such as TELL (Order), ASK (Sugg),
COMMAND, PROPOSE, ORDER…
3. The reporting Connector in Orders/Suggestions is…
In Positive sentences => TO + Infinitive
In Negative sentences => NOT TO + Infinitive
And now, the examples…
Mother to her daughter:
“Do your homework and do not take too much time!!”
The mother told her daughter TO do her homework and
NOT TO take too much time.
We have not forgotten those “Selectec Words” which we mentioned
at the beginning of this presentation. They are words which are
ALWAYS changed in Reported Speech. Luckily, they are not quite a
lot!!
NOW
THEN
AGO
BEFORE
THIS
THAT
THESE
THOSE
HERE
TODAY
TOMORROW
THERE
THAT DAY
THE NEXT DAY / THE FOLLOWING DAY
YESTERDAY
THE DAY BEFORE / THE PREVIOUS DAY