Direct and Reported Speech

Why Narration Matters in CDS English

The CDS English paper (Paper II) regularly sets direct-to-indirect (and occasionally indirect-to-direct) transformation items. These are scoring questions: once you know the procedure there is rarely any guesswork, because narration follows a tight set of rules rather than depending on your ‘feel’ for the language.

Many candidates treat narration as confusing because they try to translate sentences by instinct. The smarter approach is to treat every conversion as a checklist — conjunction, pronoun, tense, time word — applied in the same order each time. Done this way, even a long reported sentence breaks into small, predictable steps.

Narration also feeds into spotting errors and sentence improvement, where the examiner checks whether you can recognise a correctly reported sentence at a glance. A few minutes of disciplined practice here protects two to three certain marks every single year, which is significant in a paper decided by narrow margins.

The Two Parts of Every Sentence

Each direct sentence has two pieces you must identify first. Spend a moment separating them before you change anything — this is the foundation of every correct answer:

• The reporting verb — the clause that introduces the speech (e.g. She said, He asked, They told us). It usually sits outside the inverted commas.
• The reported speech — the words actually spoken by the person, placed inside inverted commas.

Example: Ravi said, “I am tired.” Here ‘Ravi said’ is the reporting verb and ‘I am tired’ is the reported speech. The comma and the inverted commas are the visual signals that mark the boundary between the two parts.

The Golden Rule of the Reporting Verb

Everything in narration depends on the tense of the reporting verb, so this is the very first thing to check. The reporting verb acts like a switch that decides whether the rest of the sentence stays still or moves backwards in time.

• If the reporting verb is in the present or future (says, will say, has said), the tense of the reported speech does not change at all. Only pronouns may need adjusting.
• If the reporting verb is in the past (said, told, asked), the reported verb usually back-shifts one step into the past, and time and place words shift too.

Compare the two cases carefully:

• He says, “I work hard.” → He says that he works hard. (present reporting verb — no change)
• He said, “I work hard.” → He said that he worked hard. (past reporting verb — back-shift)
• He will say, “I am ready.” → He will say that he is ready. (future reporting verb — no change)

This single decision saves you from the most common error in the topic — needlessly changing tenses that should have stayed exactly as they were.

How Tenses Back-shift

When the reporting verb is past, move the reported verb one tense backwards. Learn this ladder thoroughly — almost every back-shift question is decided by it:

Common shifts

• Simple present → simple past: work → worked
• Present continuous → past continuous: am working → was working
• Present perfect → past perfect: have worked → had worked
• Present perfect continuous → past perfect continuous: have been working → had been working
• Simple past → past perfect: worked → had worked
• Past continuous → past perfect continuous: was working → had been working
• will → would, can → could, may → might, shall → should

A few verbs are already as far back as they go and therefore do not move: the past perfect (had worked) and the modals would, could, might, should, ought to and must stay unchanged. So ‘He said, “I had eaten”’ simply becomes ‘He said that he had eaten’.

Changing the Pronouns

Pronouns in the reported speech change according to the famous SON rule:

• S — Subject: first-person pronouns (I, we) change to match the subject of the reporting verb.
• O — Object: second-person pronouns (you) change to match the object of the reporting verb.
• N — No change: third-person pronouns (he, she, it, they) stay the same.

Example: Sara told Ravi, “I will help you.” → Sara told Ravi that she would help him. (I→she for the subject ‘Sara’; you→him for the object ‘Ravi’.)

A second illustration makes the pattern clear: I said to her, “You have helped me.” → I told her that she had helped me. Here ‘you’ matches the object ‘her’, and ‘me’ (third element, the speaker’s own pronoun) is carried through. Work the SON rule slowly until it becomes automatic.

Changing Time and Place Words

Words pointing to the speaker’s ‘here and now’ shift to the reporter’s ‘there and then’:

• now → then; today → that day; tonight → that night
• tomorrow → the next day / the following day
• yesterday → the previous day / the day before
• ago → before; last night → the previous night
• here → there; this → that; these → those
• come → go; thus → so

Reporting Statements (Assertive Sentences)

For statements, use the conjunction that (which may be dropped) and change ‘say to’ to tell.

• ‘say to’ → told; ‘says to’ → tells; ‘said to’ → told
• ‘say’ (without an object) stays as said.

Examples:

• She said to me, “I am busy.” → She told me that she was busy.
• He said, “I have finished my work.” → He said that he had finished his work.
• They said to us, “We will meet you tomorrow.” → They told us that they would meet us the next day.

The conjunction ‘that’ may be omitted in informal writing, but for CDS transformation answers it is safest to keep it. This keeps your reported sentence unambiguous and clearly correct.

Reporting Questions (Interrogative Sentences)

In reported questions the word order becomes that of a statement (subject before verb) and the question mark disappears. The reporting verb becomes asked / enquired / wanted to know.

Yes/No questions

Introduce with if or whether.

• He said, “Do you know her?” → He asked whether I knew her.
• She said, “Has he come?” → She asked if he had come.

Wh- questions

Keep the wh-word as the connector.

• She said, “Where do you live?” → She asked where I lived.
• He said, “Why are you late?” → He asked why I was late.

Notice that in every reported question the helping verb ‘do/does/did’ disappears and its tense is absorbed into the main verb. So ‘Where do you live?’ gives ‘where I lived’, and ‘What did he say?’ gives ‘what he had said’. The subject and verb then follow normal statement order, which is the single biggest difference from direct questions.

Reporting Commands, Requests and Wishes

Imperative sentences (orders, requests, advice) drop the ‘to + verb’ structure. The reporting verb changes to ordered, told, requested, advised, forbade etc., and the verb takes the to-infinitive.

• He said to me, “Shut the door.” → He ordered me to shut the door.
• She said, “Please help me.” → She requested me to help her.
• The teacher said, “Do not make noise.” → The teacher told us not to make noise.

Exclamations and wishes

Exclamatory sentences lose their exclamation mark and interjections (Hurrah, Alas, Bravo) and are reported with verbs that capture the feeling: exclaimed with joy/sorrow, wished, prayed etc.

• He said, “Hurrah! We won.” → He exclaimed with joy that they had won.
• She said, “Alas! I have failed.” → She exclaimed with sorrow that she had failed.
• She said, “May you live long!” → She prayed that I might live long.

Mixed sentences

When a speaker uses two different sentence types together, report each part with its own connector and reporting verb — do not stitch them under a single ‘that’.

• He said, “I am busy. Please wait.” → He said that he was busy and requested me to wait.
• She said, “Where is the file? Bring it at once.” → She asked where the file was and ordered me to bring it at once.

Worked Example

Change into reported speech: Meera said to Arjun, “I will return your book tomorrow.”

Every change is rule-driven — nothing here is guesswork.

Previous-Year Style Question

Quick Revision