More Practice on Reported Speech

Exercises: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6, 7, 8, 9    and 10

Exercises in PDF

What are the Origins of Country Names?

Why your country is named so? Using the list of countries as determined by the UN and information from the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, discover surprising and intriguing language facts from around the globe.
Some examples:

Andorra

The name Andorra comes from a local Navarrese word, andurrial, meaning ‘shrub-covered land’. It has also been suggested that the country took its name from Arabic al-Gandura, ‘the wanton woman’, a legacy from the Moors.

Australia

Imaging the existence of a land located in the Southern hemisphere, the Greeks came up with the name Terra Australis Incognita, meaning ‘Unknown Southern Land’.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh means ‘Land of the Bengalis’, from deś, ‘land’ or ‘country’. The Bengalis take their name from Banga, the chief of the Dravidian-speaking Bang tribe.

Canada

Canada’s name is perhaps derived from the Huron-Iroquois word kanata, meaning ‘village’ or ‘settlement’.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg is originally found as Luciliburhuc, meaning ‘little castle’.

Spain

Spain may come from the Punic span or tsepan, ‘rabbit’, which were numerous in the peninsula, or from the Punic sphan,‘north’, since it was north of Carthage – or it may come from the Basque ezpaña, ‘lip’ or ‘extremity’, a reference to this south-western area of Europe.

Go on reading in OxfordWords Blog

Managing the Punctuation Jungle

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Tense Games: Spin the Wheel

Click on the image to practice Present Perfect / Simple Past

Confusing Verbs

Tense Games: Ladders and Snakes

Try this game to review past tenses

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Tense Games: Escape the Hangman

Practice Present Perfect with the hangman

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Reported Speech

Reported speech and indirect speech mean the same thing: They allow you to express what someone has said. 
This sentence, "He said he was studying English", is an example of reported speech. 
But how do you conjugate the verbs?
 Is it "he said he was studying" or "he said he studied"? 
Both are correct depending on the situation.
Learn how to say it correctly every time with Ronnie's quick and easy chart. Your friends said they watched this lesson. So what are you waiting for?

Reported Speech. Statements

We can report people's words by using direct speech or indirect speech. 

Direct Speech: Exact words of the speaker. We use quotation marks (' '). 
Reported (Indirect Speech): Exact meaning of what someone said but not the exact words. We do not use quotation marks. 

While reporting someone's sentences we start the sentences generally with some verbs like "say, tell". 
eg: Tom said that it was nice to be at home. 

SAY  -  TELL

Say is used with or without personal object. 
Eg: He said (that) he was Ted. 
      He said to me (that) he was Ted.  

Tell is always used with a personal object. 
Eg: He told me (that) he was Ted. 
      NOT      He told (that) he was Ted. 

We report someone's sentences after some time. Because of this, in reported speech we change personal pronouns, possessive adjectives/pronouns,  verb tense, and time expressions according to the meaning of the sentence. 

Eg: Sam said "I am flying to Italy with my family tomorrow."

Sam said that he was flying to Italy with his family the following day. 

  
When the reported sentence start with past tense verb like "said, told" etc., the verb tenses change as follows: 




Time expressions change like this:



(From Grammar Worm)

Reported Speech: Are You Lonely Tonight?

Remember to include my code: begonals

Improving Grammar

Idioms about Home

Frozen

Remember to include my teacher's code: begonals

The History of the English Language

Click on the image to enlarge

Ted Trailer

Summary: The Fellowship of the Ring

After Earth

The Big Bang Theory and the 2nd Conditional