Narration in English | Direct – Indirect Speech Rules | English By Zahid Sir
Before understanding narration with rules and examples, let’s first of all understand what is narration and how it is used in English. Narration simply means a statement. It is an act of telling something to somebody either in a direct way or an indirect way.
The notes given below cover the most important aspects of narration in English Grammar without going into too much detail and covering all the important topics at the same time.
Direct Speech = (D.S)
Indirect Speech = (I.S)
Carefully observe the sentence given below:
Rahul said, “I will go to village.”
Rahul said = Reporting verb
I will go to village = Reported speech
Now, observe the same sentence with (D.S) and (I.S) along with other sentences.
(D.S) Rahul said, “I will go to village.”
(I.S) Rahul said that he would go to village.
(D.S) Rahul says, “I will go to village.” (Reporting verb is in present)
(I.S) Rahul says that he will go to village.
(D.S) Rahul said, “the sun rises in the east.” (The sentence is regarding universal truth)
(I.S) Rahul said that the sun rises in the east.
(D.S) Rani said, “I dance daily”. (Habit)
(I.S) Rani said that she dances daily.
Change of tenses
- Present indefinite———past indefinite
- Present continuous——-past continuous
- Present perfect——past perfect
- Present perfect continuous—-past perfect continuous
- Past indefinite—-past perfect
- Past continuous—-past perfect continuous
- Past perfect——–No change
- Past perfect continuous——–No change
(D.S) He said, “I am going to school.”
(I.S) He said that he was going to school.
Change of words
- This———That
- Here——–there
- Today——-that day
- Tomorrow—–the next day
- Tonight——that night
- Come——-go
- Can——could
- May——-might
- Will——-would
- Shall—–should/would
- Next week———the following week
- Yesterday——–the previous day/ the day before
(D.S) He said, “I will go to my village today.”
(I.S) He said that he would go to his village that day.
(D.S) He said to me, “Did you speak English?”
(I.S) He asked me whether/if I had spoken English.
(D.S) He said to me, “What were you doing yesterday?”
(I.S) He asked me what I had been doing the previous day/the day before.
(D.S) He said to him, “where are you going?”
(I.S) He asked him where he was going.
Convert the following direct speech sentences into indirect speech
- He said to him, “What did you do yesterday?”
- He said, “He will not be able to learn this language.”
- Rahul said to Sameer, “Should you not behave nicely?”
- The teacher said to the students, “You all made this mistake.”
- Mukesh said to his friends, “Where are you all going?”
- John said to all classmates, “Will we all be on leave tomorrow?”
- We said, “They had gone there.”
- The manager said to the employees, “There will be a holiday tomorrow.”
- The shopkeeper said to the buyer, “There is discount of Rs 50 on most of the products with the price of Rs 500.”
- He said to his relatives, “Where were you all yesterday?”
Also read – Difference between until and unless
I’m Mohammad Zahid Hussain, a Content Writer, Spoken English, IELTS and PTE Trainer. I’m also a Professional English-Hindi and Hindi-English Translator, Editor and Proofreader. I’m a graduate from Jamia Millia Islamia University, and I’m here to share my articles on a wide range of topics to help you enhance your insights into various things to provide you with factual information and creative analysis.
