This document discusses direct and reported speech. Direct speech repeats the exact words spoken between quotation marks, with no changes. Reported speech talks about past words spoken, so the tenses of verbs are normally changed and quotation marks are not used. It provides examples of direct ("I am going to school") and reported speech (He said that he was going to school). The document also notes some common rules for changes that are made in reported speech, such as pronouns changing to third person and tenses changing if the reporting verb is in the past.

1. Reported Speech
Read the following sentence.
John said, “I am going to the church.”
"What did he say?"
You can answer the question in two ways:
1) by repeating the words spoken. (direct
speech)
2) by reporting the words spoken. (indirect
or reported speech).

2. Direct Speech
Direct speech repeats the exact words
spoken (original words of person). When we
use direct speech in writing, we place the
words spoken between inverted commas
("....") and there is no change in these
words.
(ഒരാൾ പറഞ്ഞ കാര്യം അതേ പോലെ പറയുന്നതാണ്
Direct Speech)
Eg: Raju said, “I am going to school”
രാജു പറഞ്ഞു, "ഞാൻ സ്കൂളിൽ പോകുകയാണ്."

3. Reported speech
Reported speech is usually used to talk about
the past, so we normally change the tense of
the words spoken (some changes are made in
original words of the person). We use
reporting verbs like 'said', 'told', 'asked'....etc
and we may use the word 'that' to introduce
the reported words. Inverted commas are not
used. (ഒരാൾ പറഞ്ഞ കാര്യം മറ്റൊരാൾ അയാളുടെ
ഭാഷയിൽ പറഞ്ഞാൽ Indirect Speech or
Reported Speech)
Eg: Raju said that he was going to school.
അവൻ സ്കൂളിൽ പോകുകയായിരുന്നു എന്ന് രാജു പറഞ്ഞു.

4. Rules
1. Pronouns and Possessive Adjectives
usually change from first or second to third
person.
He said,” I have lost my purse.”
He said that he had lost his purse.
Here in this sentence ‘I’ changed as ‘he’ and
‘my’ changed as ‘his’

6. 2. Adjectives, Adverbs and adverbial phrases
of time change as follows:

7. 3. Connectives or joining words change as
follows:

8. 4. Tense Change as follows if the reporting
verb is past.

9. 4. Tense Change as follows if the reporting verb is
past.