Narration: Direct and
indirect speech
What is narration? What is direct and indirect speech? Read this
post to find out the answers to these questions.
Is English your second language? And you are struggling with
it?... if yes, then welcome to our website. We wouldn’t disappoint you. In this
post, you are going to learn about narration, direct and indirect speech, and
much more related to these topics. So, let’s get into it.
Narration:
Before getting into the proper definition, let’s try to find out
what this term ‘ “narration’’ means.
Now just look at this example.
Do you remember your childhood? When you sat with your elders
like your grandmother, your grandfather. They usually told you stories about
their childhood about their young age. Right? You must be thinking how this
thing is connected with the term “ narration’’.
Well, this is connected in a way because your elders are
narrating their stories… what they had done, how they lived? They are narrating
a story and this is what we call narration. Now let’s look into the proper
definition.
“Narration is the way of
conveying a story to the audience in a spoken or written form. Narration is
conveyed by a narrator’’
This is so simple, right? Every person can be a narrator because
everyone has a story to tell someone.
If you are a student in college or school, then you are also a
narrator because your teacher sometimes asks you to write an essay about
something and you start to write that. What do you do at that moment? Dude, you
are narrating something... yeah this is just so simple.
Let’s see some examples to understand more
When you read a novel, essay, story, then the writer is the
narrator who is narrating the story for their audience.
Now just look into the style in which people usually narrate.
There are two types
1.
Direct speech
2.
Indirect speech
Direct speech:
In, direct speech or direct narrating, we simply repeat
someone’s word to other people putting the speech into speech marks.
For example:
Adam
says “I am happy”. (Direct narration)
In the above example, the person is simply instantly delivering
the speech without changing the words that’s why this is known as direct
speech.
Indirect speech:
Indirect speech is when you report someone’s word in your own
words, without using the same words and speech marks. Also known as reporting
speech.
For example:
Adam
says that he is happy. (Indirect narration)
In this example, you can see that Adam’s words are not directly
conveyed that’s why we can say this phrase is indirect speech.
Now let’s see some examples to understand this better.
1.
She will say ‘’I have
taken tea.’’ (Direct)
She will say that she has taken tea. (Indirect)
2. He said ‘’I played
cricket.’’ (Direct)
He said that he
had played cricket.’’ (Indirect)
3.
I said ‘’I was reading
a book.’’ (Direct)
I said that I
had been reading a book. (Indirect)
4.
They said, ‘’we cannot
do this.’’ (Direct)
They said that
they could not do that. (Indirect)
5.
I said to him ‘’you
have spoiled my cap.’’ (Direct)
I told him that
he had been played cricket. (Indirect)
From the above examples now, you can easily understand Direct,
In-directs
In academic or other exams some time the examiner asks you to
change the direct sentence into an Indirect sentence.
There are some important rules for changing the direct into
indirect sentences. Let’s how can we make these changes.
Rule No 1:
To change the direct speech in indirect speech you have to remove the
inverted commas and place ‘’that’’ in place of those commas.
For examples:
She said ‘’I have written a letter.’’
She said that she had written a letter.
Focus on the above example and try to observe the difference,
got that? We just removed the inverted commas and put “that.’’
Rule No 2:
If
the conjunction ‘’that’’ is present after reporting verb then we will convert
‘’that’’ into ‘’told’’ otherwise we wouldn’t change that and we don’t use
‘’to’’ with ‘’told.’’
For example:
I
said to him ‘’you have spoiled my day.’’
I
told him that he had spoiled my day.
Rule No 3:
We will change the first person (I, we, my, mine, our, us) of reported
speech into the object of reporting verb.
For example:
He
says, ‘’I am in a hurry.’’
He
says that he is in a hurry.
In this example, we changed the first person (I) of reported
speech into the object (He) of reporting verb.
Rule No 4:
The second person (you, your, yourself) in the reported speech will be
changed into the object of the reporting verb.
For example:
They
said to him ‘’you are crazy.’’
They
told him that he is crazy.
As you can see the second person (you) in the direct speech is
changed into the object (He) of reporting verb.
Rule No 5:
The third person (his, him, her, he, she, it, their, them) of the
reported speech wouldn’t be changed.
Rule No 6:
If the reported speech is in the present tense or future tense then you
don’t have to change the tense.
For example:
He
said ‘’I shall come tomorrow.’’
He
said that he would come the next day.
Rule No 7:
If the reporting verb is in the past tense then the reported speech will
change like this...
Present continuous into Past continuous
Present perfect into Past perfect
Present perfect continuous into Past perfect continuous
Past indefinite into Past perfect
Past continuous into Past perfect continuous
These were the general rules for the conversion of direct speech
into indirect speech…… There are some words or phrases which change during this
conversion, for example:
This into That;
These into those;
Here into There;
Now into Them;
Ago into Before;
Today into Previous day;
Yesterday into the previous day;
Tomorrow into next day;
These are the words which you will change during the conversion
of the speeches. Just observe the changes and memorize the rules to understand
this more easily.
There are some other rules for the Interrogative, imperative,
optative, and exclamatory sentences.
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