Mary said she enjoyed the film because Robert de Niro is her favourite actor. John said he'd stayed at the Shangri-la because it' s the best hotel in town. Sometimes we can choose between a past tense form and a present tense form. If we're talking about the past but we mention something that's still true, we can use the present tense: So, tenses in reports and summaries in English are the same as in the rest of the language. We would naturally use past tense forms to talk about things which happened ten years ago. He also wanted to know if there was an examination at the end of the course. A friend had recommended a course but Andrew needed more information, so he wrote to the school and asked them when their courses started and how much they were. He wanted to travel abroad after he had finished his course at the university, but he would need to earn some money while he was abroad so he wanted to learn to teach English as a foreign language. If we wanted to report what Andrew said in his letter, we might say something like this:Īndrew said that when he was 22, he was an engineering student in his last month at university. What courses do you have in the summer and when do they start? How much do the courses cost? Is there an examination at the end? She also gave me some details, but I would like to ask a few more questions. A friend of mine has recommended your course very highly. I will need to make some money while I am travelling, so I would like to learn to teach English as a second language so that I can make some money while I am abroad. I want to take a year off and travel round the world. I take my final exams next month and I will finish university in July. I am 22 years old and I am at university studying engineering. This is a letter that Andrew wrote ten years ago: When reporting what people say or think in English, we need to remember that the rules for tense forms in reported speech are exactly the same as in the rest of the language. GapFillTyping_MTY1NTI= Tenses in reported speech GapFillDragAndDrop_MTY1NTE= Reporting and summarising 2 See reporting verbs with that, wh- and if clauses, verbs followed by the infinitive, verbs followed by the -ing form. He suggested stopping and having a picnic. Different reporting verbs have different patterns, for example: When we want to report what people say, we use reporting verbs.

When Mary complained that she was tired out after walking so far, Peter said they could stop for a picnic. I'll tell you what, let's see if we can find a place to sit down, and then we can stop and have our picnic.

We've been walking for hours! I'm exhausted. When we want to report what people say, we don't usually try to report their exact words. Level: intermediate Reporting and summarising

Reported speech exercises pdf cambridge