Select the option that expresses the given sentence in indirect speech. “We must be vigilant. Our teacher never accepts the assignment if any one of us is late in submission”, Ramesh said to his friend.
Ramesh told his friend that they must be vigilant as their teacher never accepted the assignment if any one of them was late in submission.
Key Points
- Let's look at the steps for changing the sentence from direct to indirect speech:
- In the given sentence the reporting verb has an object "his friend". Hence, 'said to' will be changed into 'told'.
- Comma (,) and inverted commas("...") will be removed.
- The conjunction 'that' will be added.
- 'We' will be changed into 'they' according to the reporting speech. "We" implies Ramesh and his friend.
- 'must' has no past form hence, it will remain unchanged.
- Here, "accepts" and "is late" turn into "accepted" and "was late" respectively, because the reporting speech is in the past tense. (Tense change rules are in the additional information)
- 'as' is used as a connector.
Therefore, the correct answer is "Ramesh told his friend that they must be vigilant as their teacher never accepted the assignment if any one of them was late in submission."
Additional Information
- The following table will enable us to know how tense changes in indirect speech:-
| Direct Speech | Indirect Speech |
Simple Present | Simple Past (Subject + V2 + Object) |
| Present Continuous (Subject + is/am/are + V1 + ing + Object) | Past Continuous (Subject + was/were + V1 + ing + Object) |
| Present Perfect (Subject + has/have + V3 + Object) | Past Perfect (Subject + had + V3 + Object) |
| Simple Past (Subject + V2 + Object) | Past Perfect (Subject + had + V3 + Object) |
| Past Continuous (Subject + was/were + V1 + ing + Object) | Past Perfect Continuous (Subject + had been + V1 + ing + Object) |
| Simple Future (Subject + will/shall + V1 + Object) | Present Conditional (Subject + would + V1 +Object) |
| Future Continuous (Subject + will/shall + V1 + ing + Object) | Conditional Continuous (Subject + would + be + V1 + ing + Object) |
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Important Questions from Direct and Indirect Speech
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