Question

Tracy: "I'm driving to work now". Tracy said that she had been driving to work then. Tracy said that she was driving to work then. When we report someone’s words we can do it in two ways: (1) we can use direct speech with quotation marks (“I work in an office.”), or (2) 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 are porting 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.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 we should change ‘’m driving’ into ‘was driving’. It is not always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – she is still driving to work – we can use the present continuous in the reported sentence. But in the test the variant ‘Tracy said that she is driving to work 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 4.

Accepted Answer

Tracy said that she drove to work now. Tracy said that she was driving to work now. d

Question	Tracy: "I'm driving to work now".
A	Tracy said that she drove to work now.
B	Tracy said that she had been driving to work then.
C	Tracy said that she was driving to work now.
D	Tracy said that she was driving to work then.
Answer	d
Remark	When we report someone’s words we can do it in two ways: (1) we can use direct speech with quotation marks (“I work in an office.”), or (2) 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 are porting 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.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 we should change ‘’m driving’ into ‘was driving’. It is not always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – she is still driving to work – we can use the present continuous in the reported sentence. But in the test the variant ‘Tracy said that she is driving to work 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 4.

Work Driving Reported Tracy Direct Speech Change Worked