| Question | Simon: "I'm taking shower now". |
|---|---|
| A | Simon said that he was taking shower now. |
| B | Simon said that he was taking shower then. |
| C | Simon said that he had been taking shower then. |
| D | Simon said that he had been taking shower now. |
| Answer | b |
| Remark | Usually we change the tense of what was actually said in direct speech. The present continuous tense(‘I am dancing’) usually changes to the past continuous (she/he was dancing) in reported speech. Therefore, in the test sentence ‘Simon: "I'm taking shower now".’ we should change ‘’m taking’ into ‘was taking’. It is not always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – he is still taking shower – we can use the present continuous in the reported sentence. But in the test the variant ‘Simon said that he is taking shower now.’ is not given. 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 ANSWER 2. |
Tags: reported_speech
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