What is Reported Speech?

Sometimes someone says a sentence, for example, "I'm going to the cinema tonight". Later, maybe we want to tell someone else what the first person said.

We use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence:

• Direct speech: I like ice cream.

• Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

We don't need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person' from 'I' to 'she'. We may also need to change words like 'my' and 'your'.

You can choose if you want to use 'that' or not in English. I've put it in brackets () to show that it's optional.

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech:

• Direct speech: I like ice cream.

• Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.