Synthesis & Transformation: Changing Direct Speech to Reported Speech

I visited the English PSLE forum on KiasuParents recently and discovered a lively argument about the conversion of direct speech to reported speech. There seems to be some misconceptions lying around so I thought it would be timely to do a post on it just before the PSLE.

Tenses

Firstly, let’s tackle the tenses. The column on the left shows the tense used in the direct speech and the column on the right shows the tense it should be converted to when we change direct speech to reported speech.

Direct Speech	Indirect Speech
Simple Present Tense	Simple Past Tense
Simple Past Tense	Past Perfect Tense
Present Perfect Tense	Past Perfect Tense
Present Continuous Tense	Past Continuous Tense

Note:

Because of the first rule (simple present tense to past perfect tense), that means all the modals in the direct speech would need to be changed to the past form if they are in the present form. Modals include:

Present Form	Past Form
can	could
will	would
may	might

There are other modals but these are the more common ones that tend to appear in Synthesis & Transformation.

Other words that need to be changed

The first thing to look out for after the tenses would be the pronouns. What a particular pronoun is changed to depends on the context.

Example:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Why did you not wash the dishes?’

In this case, the pronoun in the direct speech ‘you’ needs to be changed to ‘he’.

Other words that need to be changed:

tomorrow	the following day
yesterday	the previous day
next week/month, etc	the following week/month, etc
last week/month, etc	the previous week/month, etc
here	there
this / these	that / those

Beware when the direct speech is a question

You need to be careful when the direct speech holds a question because then the order of the words usually has to be changed during conversion. This change is to change the structure of the sentence from a question to a statement.

Example:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Why are the dishes not washed?’

Many pupils would answer:

Mother asked Peter why were the dishes not washed.

This part ‘…why were the dishes not washed’ is wrong, because it is still in the question form. To change it to the statement form, the verb (‘were’) has to be put after the subject (‘the dishes’). And that is the general rule for changing a question to a statement:

The verb has to be placed after the subject (noun doing the action).

So the correct answer to the question above should be:

Mother asked Peter why the dishes were not washed.

Common questions regarding conversion of direct speech to reported speech

1. When do we use ‘if’, ‘whether’, ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘how’?

‘If’ and ‘whether’ are interchangeable. It really does not matter which of the two you use. But if you are not sure about the spelling of ‘whether’, keep to ‘if’.

You use them when the answer to the question being asked is a ‘yes/no’ one.

Example:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Did you wash the dishes?’

Ans: Mother asked Peter if/whether he had washed the dishes.

[Peter’s answer would have been a ‘Yes, I did.’ Or ‘No, I didn’t.’.]

But when the question begins with one of the 5Ws or 1H, you use back the same W or H.

Examples:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Why are the dishes not washed?’

Ans: Mother asked Peter why the dishes were not washed.

Mother asked Peter, ‘When were the dishes washed?’

Ans: Mother asked Peter when the dishes had been washed.

And so on…

2. Do I have to use ‘that’ in reported speech?

No. ‘That’ is optional.

Example:

Peter told Mother, ‘I forgot about them.’

Ans:

Peter told Mother he had forgotten about them.

Peter told Mother that he had forgotten about them.

Both answers are perfectly fine.

And note that ‘that’ is only used when the direct speech is in the form of a statement, not a question.

That’s all I can think off the top of my head at the moment. If I’ve missed out anything or you have any points to add, feel free to drop me an email at learningpartnersyishun@gmail.com.