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hi everybody my name is alicia in this
lesson we're going to talk about
reporting speech in english i'm going to
talk about the verbs we use and a couple
of grammar points that you can think
about so let's get started
the first type of speech reporting i
want to introduce is reporting
statements so statements are just simple
things simple sentences that people said
so this can be direct dialogue exactly
the thing someone said or it can be a
summary of something someone said so
keep in mind these are not
questions i'm going to talk about
questions later
let's look
at the verbs and the other expressions
we use to report simple statements
the first one is the very very neutral
said i said
said is the past tense form of say so we
use say and past tense said as the most
basic way to share something someone
else said so we can use this for direct
reports meaning exactly the things
someone said we do
this we use quotes to indicate direct
speech
or we can just use it as i have here to
introduce a summary of something in this
example sentence i said i had to work so
this is just a simple summary i said
something similar in the past perhaps
but this is maybe not a direct report of
my speech we can use said in most cases
just to report information this was said
by someone the speaker is here the
subject so i in this case i said i had
to work we could change it too he said
he had to work it's fine they said they
had to work
so this is the most basic verb we can
use to report speech let's move on to a
couple other ones let's look at this
told here i'm using the verb tell but
i'm using past tense told
so here the speaker is indicated at the
beginning of the sentence he
and then the person receiving the
information in this case me
follows the verb so he told me in this
case the train was late he told me the
train was late so this is a past
situation i received information from
him
the information was this he told me the
train was late
so you can change uh the person speaking
and the person receiving by changing
these two parts on either side of the
verb my mother told my brother to clean
his room for example so keep in mind
when you use the verb tell or in this
case past tense told the idea is that
it's more one-way communication it's not
really a conversation in this case he
told me so meaning information is coming
this way only i'm not sharing
information with him really he's just
sharing something with me it's one way
so we use told to communicate that of
course we could use said here he said
the train was late using tell or in this
case past tense told uh just makes the
feeling of one-way communication
stronger he told me okay now i want to
go on to some very casual expressions
that you see for reporting direct speech
especially in american english
the first one is this
was all was all so i've used this in
past tense here you may hear this in
present tense she's all as in this
example
but was all is quite common too so was
all
is a very casual way of using a verb
like said
however we use this to report direct
speech so these quotes show this is
exactly the thing someone said these
little quotation marks in this case she
was all you're not gonna believe this so
this is the exact statement
the speaker she said in the past she
said exactly this we know this because
we've used this reporting expression and
in this case uh in the written words we
see the the quotation marks here so when
you're speaking or when you're listening
for this you won't hear she was all
you'll hear she was all so she was all
you're not going to believe this it's
quite fast she was all she was all
so sometimes this w sound is very
difficult to hear you might just hear
she's all she's all in which case it
sounds like present tense but in both
cases the basic meaning of just
communicating speech remains so don't
worry too much about catching this w
sound so this she's all uh
is fine to understand what's going on
another one that uses this same was
pattern is using like another very
casual way to report
direct speech so in this case who is
speaking my mom so my mom was like you
can't go out this weekend so in this
sentence too
these words here are exactly the words
my mother
said
but we use was like here so you'll
notice that these two expressions was
all and was like while they're very very
casual
they're used to kind of report something
that's maybe shocking or surprising or
maybe a little bit gossipy in this case
maybe the speaker is complaining so it's
very very casual situations that we use
these expressions and my mom was like so
again this w sound my mom was like
this kind of disappears a little bit
we can also use it in present tense my
mom is like but my mom was like is good
for a clear past tense report
okay so we use the next pair went and go
to report speech very casually so
you can see here there is past tense
went present tense go we use them in the
same way again just as with was all and
was like we use these to communicate
direct
quotes these are exact quotes things
people actually said
so they went
we're leaving so again we could say they
said we're leaving but using wendt
again has this sort of very casual maybe
gossipy like there's a little bit of
exciting information there perhaps
same thing with go so i go fine i'm
leaving too so we use these two together
in very casual situations
that have kind of a quick conversational
feel about them we can say these things
very quickly in a pair they went we're
leaving so i go fine i'm leaving too so
having this kind of went and go match
together
feels very natural i think to native
speakers same thing here she was all and
my mom was like using these together in
the same kind of dialogue report sounds
quite natural i think but generally
using a mix of all of these to report
statements is a really good idea if you
use the exact same expression to report
report report all the time it sounds a
little bit unnatural kind of stiff okay
so these are all for statements these
are all for statements let's look at two
patterns for uh questions now
so here i have the past tense asked
and inquired used here
i chose these two just because
asked is kind of the casual or the
everyday verb we can use for questions
inquired just sounds more formal it's a
more formal way of saying asked so some
examples of this are i asked about the
menu and i asked if there were any
vacancies these are two common patterns
i asked about some topic
or i asked if
and then there's some kind of inquiry
point here i asked if there were any
vacancies here
same thing we can do with uh inquired he
inquired about the company so we see the
same about plus a topic point
um we can also with the verb ask use a
direct
quote too so for example i asked what
are you doing that's also okay we can
use ask with a direct quote um
you can also use it with inquired as
well if you like but perhaps this one is
a little bit more useful for everyday
conversations and everyday questions
so throughout this lesson i've talked
about using the past tense and the
present tense for reporting but what's
the difference so i want to talk a
little bit about that here to finish
that
so past tense and present tense both
used to report speech both fine to
report speech here i've used simple past
and simple present tense you might also
hear uh progressive tense in the past or
in the present tense
um but the difference between them
present tense if you use present tense
it feels like the story is happening now
so if i'm using present tense to
uh report speech and maybe to share the
points in the story as well it sounds
like the story is happening now it's
present it's present tense it's
happening in the present so if i want my
story to feel kind of lively and more
exciting i can use present tense to tell
my story
if however past tense is used it sounds
more like just a simple report it's like
you're just telling facts what happened
there's not really like a feeling of
excitement necessarily it's just simple
reporting so we see past tense and
simple past tense uh story reporting in
the news for example so in the news it's
simple reports of fact what happened on
that day you'll see simple past tense
used in english news reports so this is
kind of a key difference that you can
think about when you're telling stories
and you're reporting information as well
all right that's everything for this
lesson i hope that it was useful for you
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thanks very much for watching this
episode and i will see you again next
time bye
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