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- Alice: "John is always polite".
Question 1:
Alice: "John is always polite". A. Alice said that John was being always polite
B. Alice said that John would be always polite
C. Alice said that John had always been polite
D. Alice said that John was always polite.
Feedback When we report someone’s words we can do it in two ways: (1) we can use direct speech with quotation marks (“I work in an office.”), or (2) we can use reported speech (She said she worked in an office.) Speech reports consist of two parts: the reporting clause (She said that …) in which we usually use are porting verb (e.g. say, tell, ask, etc.) and the reported clause (…she worked in an office.).Some verbs (accept, agree, complain, feel, say, etc.) connected with reporting can be followed bya that-clause acting as the direct object: She said that she worked in an office.Usually we change the tense of what was actually said in direct speech. The present simple tense (‘I dance’) usually changes to the past simple (she/he danced) in reported speech. Therefore, in the test sentence ‘Alice: "John is always polite".’ we should change ‘is’ into ‘was’. But it is not always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – she still works in an office – we can use the present simple in the reported sentence. But in the test the variant ‘Alice said that John is always polite.’ is not given. Thus,we are to choose only ANSWER 4: the reporting clause ‘Alice said that’ + the reported clause ‘John was always polite’.
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