📨 Grammar B2-9: Reported speech: extended
B1 taught you to carry the words across a report: step the tense back, turn the pronouns, re-measure the time words. This material adds the three things it deliberately left out. First, reported questions, where the word order un-flips and the tense steps back at the same time, do and does and did disappear leaving their tense behind, and if or whether holds a yes/no clause open. Second, commands and requests, reported with told, asked, warned, ordered or reminded plus a person plus a to-infinitive, with not welded in front of to. Third, and above all, the reporting verbs that swallow the sentence: she said she was sorry she had broken it becomes she apologised for breaking it. Five patterns are drilled by shape rather than by meaning, because the shape is what learners get wrong, and the classic wrecks are targeted head-on: suggested me to go, denied to take it, accused him for taking it, said me.
Lesson Plan
- Why a fluent report picks a verb that already contains the words
- The pattern strips: denied + -ing, and warned + person + not to
- Nine words of flat report against five words of compressed report
Key Vocabulary
Grammar Points
- Reported questions: statement word order plus backshift; do / does / did removed with their tense transferred; if and whether for yes/no questions; subject questions keep their order
- Reported commands and requests: verb + object + (not) to-infinitive, with not placed in front of the whole infinitive
- Reporting verb + (that) + clause: admit, deny, claim, insist, explain, promise, complain, point out
- Reporting verb + to-infinitive with no object: offer, refuse, agree, threaten, promise
- Reporting verb + -ing: suggest, recommend, propose, admit, deny
- Reporting verb + preposition + -ing: apologise for, accuse of, insist on, blame for, congratulate on, object to
¡Únete a nuestras clases!
Creemos que las preguntas correctas traen las respuestas correctas. Siempre estamos aquí para ti.
