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Reported Speech Reporting Kate Worked Clause Change Tomorrow

Question Kate: "I'll do it tomorrow".
A Kate said that she would do it tomorrow.
B Kate said that she did the next day.
C Kate said that she would do it the next day.
D Kate said that she had done it tomorrow.
Answer c
Remark When we report someone’s words we can use reported speech (She said she worked in an office.) Speech reports consist of two parts: the reporting clause (She said that …) in which we usually use a reporting verb (e.g. say, tell, ask, etc.) and the reported clause (…she worked in an office.).Some verbs (accept, agree, complain, feel, say, etc.) connected with reporting can be followed bya that-clause acting as the direct object: She said that she worked in an office. But we often omit ‘that’,especially in informal situations.If the reporting verb is in the past tense (She said…), usually we change the tenses in the reported speech: She said (that) she worked in an office. In all the test answers the reporting clause is in the past: ‘Kate said…’. In reported speech the future (‘I will dance…’) usually becomes the future-in- the-past(‘she/he would dance…’). But it is not always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – she plans to do it tomorrow – we can use the future simple in the reported sentence. But in the test the variant ‘Kate says/said that she will do it tomorrow.’ is not given.Moreover, we also need to change time expressions in reported speech if the context of the reported statement (the period of time) is different from that of the direct speech: ‘now’ → ‘then’, ‘last week’ → ‘the week before’ etc.Thus, we are to choose only ANSWER 3, because in reported speech ‘tomorrow’ changes into ‘the next day’ or ‘the following day’.

Tags: reported_speech

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