Indirect Speech
Indirect Speech is a method of communicating ideas or knowledge with engaging in a direct exchange. This often means Reported Speech, which is how we repeat a what we or someone else said, sacrificing word-for-word repetition for the sake of maintaining accuracy or clarity. Indirect Speech can also be a more roundabout way of saying something, which we often do for Polite and Formal Questions.
Reported Speech
Reporting Verbs
RECOMMENDATION: Visit the Reported Speech page first.
Indirect Questions
RECOMMENDATION: Visit the Reported Speech page first.
Backshifting
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General Notes
Colored Text
Our videos feature selective colored text. Colors stand out and help students know what to pay attention to. We’re rather consistent with our color choices so that students learn to expect certain things from certain colors. We recommend using this same technique yourself. Read our article to learn more.
In the Indirect Speech series, we use blue for past, red for present, and green for future.
Focus on Structure & Usage
Most of our methods are all about either sentence structure or usage. We touch on forms of individual words less often, and we hardly ever address infection or pronunciation. All five of these are important, but form and pronunciation tend to be more straightforward, so we let teachers decide for themselves how to present those. We dedicate our resources to the trickier stuff.
Working in Phrases
Most of the time when we say ‘noun’, we actually mean ‘noun phrase’, which typically includes determiners (like articles, possessives, and quantifiers) and sometimes adjectives. We often do the same with verb strings; auxiliary verbs, ‘not’, and sometimes adverbs are included when we say ‘verb’.
Within the framework of a sentence, combining all those individual words into one block is generally helpful, as they act together to serve a single purpose.
American English
We mostly use American English, although most ESOL books primarily use British English. We do this because our founder and lead content creator is American, so it’s what comes natural to him. Just think of this as an excuse to teach your students some of the differences between British English and American English.