Reported Speech

to report (verb): to tell somebody what you have heard or seen

direct speechreported speech
He said: "I love you."He said that he loved me.

If we want to say what somebody has said, we basically have two options:

  1. We can use the person's exact words in quotation marks "..." (direct speech)
  2. We can change the person's words into our own words (reported speech)

Useful Tip

Reported speech is not really difficult. It is more a matter of logic and common sense. You probably have the same concept in your own language, where you use your own words to say what somebody has said or written.

In this lesson we learn about reported speech, the structure that we use when we report what another person has said.

So now we will look at:

And after that you can check your understanding of reported speech with our...