Reported speech and how it works.

When do we use reported speech?

Sometimes someone says a sentence and maybe you want to tell someone else what the first person said,in that moment we use reported speech.

Here is how it works:

We use a reporting verb like "say" or "tell".

If this verb is in present tense we just put "she says" and then the rest of the sentence in that case.

But,if the reporting verb is in the  past tense,then we usualy change the tenses in the reported speech.

I bought a car-Direct speech.

She said she had bought a car-Reported speech.

I found some practice for you guys,read carefuly and pay atention to the tenses.

http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/reported_speech/backshift.htm

Occasionally, we don't need to change the present tense into the past if the information in direct speech is still true (but this is only for things which are general facts, and even then usually we like to change the tense).