Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and
welcome to this lesson on "Reported Speech". Now, in this lesson, I'm going to look at
two very specific cases of reported speech, and I will expect that you already have the
basic knowledge of how reported speech works. If you don't, we have a lot of videos
on engVid to get you prepared. Benjamin has done a lesson
on reported speech, Ronnie has done one, I've done one on "say"
and "tell", so make sure you have the basics of this before you jump
to this lesson, or watch this lesson first and then go back and look at
those lessons for the basics. So, today, I'm going to tell you how to report
imperatives and instructions, and how to report yes and no questions. So, imperatives.
What's an imperative? It's a command: "Stop", "Don't do that", "Don't go there", "Study a
lot of English if you want to improve", whatever it is. And instructions, you know, instructions,
commands, these are very similar things. But an instruction could be something you read
on the back of a box of cookies, and how to bake them, for example. So, first, let's look at an affirmative imperative,
an affirmative instruction or a command. So if your teacher says: "Turn to page 209 in
your textbook", how do you report this? Well, when you're reporting something that is a
command, that is an imperative, that starts with a base verb like "go", "do", "play",
"make", "turn", what you need to do after your reporting verb: "He said", you actually
need to use "to" plus the base verb. Okay? So, here: "Turn to page 209." If I'm saying
this and later you go to your friend, or your friend says: "What did he say?" You said:
"Oh, he said to turn to page 209." So, we have: "Turn to page 209." When you're reporting,
make sure you have "to" plus the base verb. Okay? "He said to turn to page 209.", "He
told us to turn to page 209." So, here we have: "He told us to turn to page 209." And
again, I'm going to assume that you already have the basics of reporting structure, but
here specifically, this is an instruction, an imperative that you are reporting. So you
have the base verb in the instruction, and then you have "to" plus the base
verb when you're reporting it. Now, if you are reporting a negative command,
for example: "Do not cross the street." Maybe you are reading a sign that says: "Do not
cross when red." You know, when the light is red, for example. Well, how do you
report a negative one? Very, very simple: "The sign said not to cross
the street." Okay? So, here we have "to turn", here
we have "not to cross". So, an imperative will always be in
the present. You will always hear: "Stop", "Go", "Do", "Don't", okay?
And because of that, when you are reporting a
negative imperative, all you have to do is add "not" before
"to" plus the base verb. So: "The teacher said not to do this.",
"The sign said not to do this." Okay? So, again, if you
are reading, let's say, an instruction manual for your new digital
camera or your new phone and it says, okay: "Charge your phone before first use." So,
before you use your phone, charge it for six hours, for example. So, say: -"Hey, what does the instruction
manual say? My phone is not turning on." -"Ah, the instruction manual says to
charge it", "to charge", the instructions say to charge for six hours before
you use it for the first time. Now, let's move on to yes/no questions.
So, we have three yes/no questions. "Do you need help?", "Is she
here?", "Can you play guitar?" So, first: "Do you
need help?" Yes or no? Present simple question. "He asked", and again, I'm
going to give you a lot of different reporting verbs, here, like: "He asked", "He wanted
to know", "He was wondering", and I'm going to assume that you already have this knowledge.
"He asked me" or "He asked if I needed help." And again, you can probably already see this
formula, here, "if", "if", "if". So, when you are reporting a yes/no question, in the
reporting, you need to add an "if". Very simple. For example, number two: -"Hey. Is she here?"
-"He wanted to know if she was here." Okay? And again, you notice that, you know, the
question is: "Is she here?" The reporting is: "He wanted to know if she was here." This
is information that you would get in any basic tutorial on reported speech, so
make sure you have those basics. And then, finally... I'm moving everywhere today.
"Can you play guitar?" Here's the reporting: "He was wondering if I could play guitar." So,
all you hear... All you see all the time: "if", "if", "if". "I want to know if", "He
wanted to know if", "She asked me if". So, any time you are reporting a yes or no question, make
sure you are using an "if" in that report-okay?-when you report that speech. So, a lot of information today. And again,
think of this as the bonus level of reported speech, because obviously, you probably know
the basics, and this is a little bit extra. It's very specific situations that
we are looking at in this video. If you want to test your
understanding of this material, if you want to see if you can recognize how to, you know,
transform an imperative or an instruction into reported speech, how to change a yes/no
question into reported speech - check out the quiz
on www.engvid.com. And if you enjoyed this video: comment on
it, like it, subscribe to the channel, and check me out on Facebook and Twitter.
Always pretty active over there. I have my #randomenglish thing
that I do pretty regularly. So, check me out there. And until
next time, thanks for clicking. Bye.
