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  • Hi. My name's Ronnie. I'm going to teach you some very, very simple reported speech things.

  • If you don't know what reported speech is, welcome to the confusing word... World of

  • confusing reported speech and words. Reported speech, maybe when you study it in your class,

  • the teacher or whoever, will call it indirect speech. It's the same. So, indirect speech

  • or reported speech is exactly the same. Yay. Why or how do we use reported speech? Good

  • question. We use this to report or to write down what somebody has said.

  • If somebody has told you something, this is going to be a quote. A "quote" means you copy

  • the person's words exactly. You have to be really careful not to change their words.

  • Reported speech or indirect speech is usually only used for writing. So, we don't really

  • have to worry about all of these crazy rules when we speak. Whew, thank god. So, we're

  • just going to go through the past, the present, and the future. We're going to change quoted

  • speech into reported speech. This little chart will help you. If you want to copy down this

  • chart, take a picture of the chart, I guarantee it will make your reported speech grammar

  • class or grammar learning amazing. Check it out.

  • So, in the present tense, we have two tenses, we have present simple or simple present and

  • we have present continuous. As an example: "She eats lunch." is present simple. This

  • is something she does every day. So if I wanted to report or write down this, write this down,

  • I would use reported speech. So: "She eats lunch." My present simple, what I'm going

  • to do is I'm going to take my verb "eats", and change it to past simple. So, present

  • simple verb we're going to change to past simple. I would say: "She said she ate lunch."

  • In this sentence, "eat" is present simple; in the reported speech, "ate" is my past simple.

  • So, present simple changes to past simple in reported speech.

  • If I have a present continuous example, this means something the person is doing now...

  • For example: "He is painting." So he's an artist, he's got a paint brush and some paint,

  • and he's painting. We have to change this to past continuous. So, if we have "is painting",

  • all we have to do to make this past continuous is change it to "was painting". Present continuous

  • to past continuous, the only thing that changes is our "to be" verb changes from present to

  • past. "He said he was painting."

  • Moving right along. Or moving back, back to the future. We have present perfect. An example

  • of a present perfect sentence: "He", sorry. "They had a shower." It's about time; they

  • smell a lot. So, if we wanted to report this or write this down, we would say... Oh, he

  • said... He... Sorry: "They have had". This is strange, "have had". Check this out. Present

  • perfect is going to change to past perfect. So: "They have had", if we change it to past

  • perfect, we have to change it to "had had". Ronnie, "had had"? Is that true? Yes. This

  • is right. So, present perfect, "have had", changes to "had" plus PP: "had had". So: "They

  • said they had had a shower." And it's about time, because they're pretty smelly.

  • The next one: past simple. For example: "He took my photo." In this sentence, your verb

  • is "took". This is a past. So, past simple, present perfect, both of these we have to

  • change to, again, past perfect. So we're going to change this to:

  • "They said he had taken my photo."

  • And the last one, past perfect, don't change it. It's cool. It's already done. Past perfect

  • you have to change to past perfect, so you don't have to change the grammar in this sentence.

  • -"They had had a dog." -"They said they had had"-that's crazy again, but it's true-"a

  • dog." So, if you have a past sentence, present perfect, simple past, or past perfect, all

  • of these are going to be changed to past perfect. That's easier. "Had" plus the past participle.

  • You okay?

  • Moving on to the future. We have two future tenses in English. Future simple or simple

  • future, which is going to be "will", and we have future "going to". Simple future: "She

  • will go." Future "going to": "They are going to play football with their new shoes." Do

  • you play football? Future simple: "She will go", all we're going to do is change the verb

  • or the modal "will" to "would". So it's going to change to: "She would go". That's cool.

  • "Will" changes to "would". That's easy.

  • "They are going to play football." This is future "going to". To make this guy reported

  • speech, all we're going to do is change "are" to "were" or "was". Oh, do you know when to

  • use "was" and when to use "were"? If it's "I", we use "was". If it's "he", we use "was",

  • and "she" we use "was", and if it's "it". If it's "were", we use "they" and "we".

  • Reported speech can be really, really difficult and confusing, but if you can remember one,

  • two, three, four, five easy ways to get this down, you're going to have no problem reporting

  • what somebody has told you. Take care, and report carefully.

Hi. My name's Ronnie. I'm going to teach you some very, very simple reported speech things.

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