QOTD - English - Direct/Indirect Speech Question

2019-09-27 | Team PendulumEdu

In the following question, a sentence has been given in Direct/ Indirect Speech. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Indirect/ Direct Speech.

Shilpa said, “I am a good girl.”

Options:

A. Shilpa is a good girl.

B. Shilpa said that she was a good girl.

C. Shilpa said that she is being a good girl.

D. She is a good girl, Shilpa said.

Solution:

The given sentence is in Direct Speech. Let us first understand the difference between the two forms of speech:

Direct Speech: the message of the speaker is conveyed or reported in his own actual words without any change.
Indirect Speech: the message of the speaker is conveyed or reported in our own words.

When a sentence is converted from Direct to Indirect speech, some common rules are followed:

All inverted commas or quotation marks are omitted, and the sentence ends with a full stop.
The conjunction ‘that’ is added before the indirect statement.
The pronoun ‘is’ changes from first person to third person.
The verb and the adverb are changed to their respective past tense forms.

In the above sentence, the pronoun is “I” which is converted to “she”; the verb is “is”, which is converted to “was”.

The option that converts the given sentence correctly as per the above rules is option B. All the other options can, therefore, be eliminated.

Hence, (B) is the correct answer.

This question is asked in various competitive exams, including SSC CGL, SSC CHSL, SSC MTS, SSC CPO, etc. In order to understand how to solve this kind of question, one needs to regularly practice and keep oneself updated. PendulumEdu offers a variety of mock tests for you to up your skills to excel in these exams with flying colours.

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