Reported (= Indirect) speech & Direct speech (Part 1)

                                                              Reported speech (1)
For some learners, they are considered to be something difficult but actually they are not if we know the rules how to invert from direct into indirect one.

When we want to report someone’s statement / sentence, we can do it in two ways. We can use direct speech with quotation marks (ilaz said: “I am an Islamic school boy ”), or we can use reported speech (ilaz said (that) he was an Islamic school boy.)

In reported speech the tenses, word-order and pronouns may be different from those in the original sentence.

Present simple > Past simple
Direct speech: “I speak a lot in my job” Reported speech: He said that he spoke a lot in his job.
The present simple tense (I speak) usually changes to the past simple (he spoke) in reported speech.

Present continuous > Past continuous
Direct speech: “The baby’s playing.”  The baby sitter said. Reported speech: She told me that the baby was playing.

“I teach in Serang” Reported speech: He told me that he teaches in Serang.
It isn’t always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – he still teaches in  Serang – we can use the present simple in the reported sentence.

Past simple and past continuous tenses
Direct speech: “We lived in Cilegon for 5 years.” Reported speech: She told me they had lived in Cilegon for 5 years.
The past simple tense (we lived) usually changes to the past perfect (they had lived) in reported speech.

Direct speech: “I was walking downtown when I saw the accident.” Reported speech: He told me he’d been walking downtown when he’d seen the accident.
The past continuous usually changes to the past perfect continuous.

Perfect tenses
Direct speech: “My parents have always been very kind to me”. Reported speech: She said her parents had always been very kind to her.
The present perfect tense (have always been) usually changes to the past perfect tense (had always been).

Direct speech: “They had already gone when I came” Reported speech: He said they had already gone when he had come.
The past perfect tense does not change in reported speech.

You can find the information more detail about it in Reported speech (Part 2).