Reporting a statement is not the only transformation English needs — commands drop the reporting verb "said" for "ordered" or "requested", and exclamations lose their punctuation altogether.
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When the reporting verb is in the past, the tense inside the speech usually moves one step back — and time/place words change too.
📌 The backshift rule
Present simple → past simple: "I go" → he said he went.
Present perfect → past perfect: "I have finished" → he said he had finished.
No backshift needed if the reporting verb is present/future, or the fact is universally true.
✨ Time and place words that must change
| Direct speech | Indirect speech |
|---|---|
| today | that day |
| tomorrow | the next day |
| yesterday | the day before |
| here | there |
| this | that |
Each sentence type needs its own reporting verb and its own word order — mixing them up is the single most common Olympiad error.
📊 Reporting verb by sentence type
| Type | Reporting verb | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Command | ordered / told | "Sit down!" → He ordered them to sit down. |
| Request | requested | "Please help me" → He requested me to help him. |
| Yes/No question | asked if/whether | "Are you ready?" → She asked if I was ready. |
| Wh-question | asked + wh-word | "Where do you live?" → He asked where I lived. |
| Exclamation | exclaimed with joy/sorrow that | "What a lovely day!" → She exclaimed that it was a lovely day. |
Olympiad trap: A reported question NEVER keeps the question mark or the question word order. "He asked where I lived," not "He asked where did I live?"
Achievers questions often combine a pronoun change with a tense change in the same sentence — miss either one and the answer is wrong.
🏆 Checking all three shifts at once
Pronoun: does "I/you/we" correctly become "he/she/they" to match who is speaking?
Tense: has the verb correctly moved one step into the past (if needed)?
Time/place word: has "today/here/this" correctly changed to "that day/there/that"?
Pro tip: "Said to" always becomes "told" in indirect speech, never "said" — "He said to me" → "He told me", because "said" cannot directly take a person as its object.
12 IEO-pattern questions on reported speech across all sentence types, including two Achievers-level questions.
