Present simple reported speech
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Grammar
Present simple tense rules Present simple use Present simple typical words Present simple reported speech Present simple passive Present simple spelling rules |
Exercises Present Simple |
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Reported Speech in Present Simple tense is shown in the following sentence:
| "I write | an email | every day", | he says. |
The next sentence shows how this sentence looks in Reported Speech.
| He says (that) | he writes | an email | every day. |
As you can see if the verb ( in our case: SAY ) is used in present tense, then it is not necessary to change the tenses. The next sentence shows what is going to happen when we use the verb ( SAY ) in past tense.
| "I write | an email | every day", | he said. | ||
If the change the sentence above into Reported Speech it is going to look like this:
| He said (that) | he wrote | an email | every day. |
As you an see we had to change Present Simple Tense into Past Simple Tense. The table below shows the changes required in Present Simple in Reported Speech.
| He says (that) | Present Simple | ⇉ | Present Simple |
The changes of tenses showed above are very 'mechanical'. Knowing them is very useful when you take any exams or tests in English. The truth is that our sample sentence can be also changed in the following way:
| "I write an email every day", he said. | He said he writes an email every day. |
Such a change is also possible in the situation when the person still writes emails every day and the person wasn't writing an email at the time when this sentence was said.