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Anonymous Posted 16 years ago
Grammar
Reported questions
I'd be grateful if anyone could answer this question that a student asked me. I couldn't answer it and none of my colleagues could either.
My lesson started to go downhill when they had to report the question...
"What was the last film you saw?"
If 'the last film you saw' is the subject and 'is' is the verb then to report it, we should put the subject first, followed by the verb and backshift the verb.
This seemed simple enough as I embarked on my explanation and the resulting reported question was...
He asked me what the last fim I saw had been.
This sounded strange to me and one of my students instinctively picked up on the hesitancy in my voice and asked if it should be
He asked me what the last film I had seen had been.
This sounded strange so I said 'no' but couldn't give any sound reason why not.
Having asked around in the staffroom, 'He asked me what the last film I had seen was' has also been suggested.
The same problem arose with
"What is the longest time that you have spent out of your home country?"
Two possibilities...
She asked me what the longest time I have spent out of my country was.
She asked me what the longest time I had spent out of my country was.
If anyone knows a rule for how to report questions such as those above, I'd be really grateful if you could let me know. It had been a few years since I'd had one of these embarrassing 'I don't know' moments in class and I'd like to try and claw back some credibility.
Many thanks
My lesson started to go downhill when they had to report the question...
"What was the last film you saw?"
If 'the last film you saw' is the subject and 'is' is the verb then to report it, we should put the subject first, followed by the verb and backshift the verb.
This seemed simple enough as I embarked on my explanation and the resulting reported question was...
He asked me what the last fim I saw had been.
This sounded strange to me and one of my students instinctively picked up on the hesitancy in my voice and asked if it should be
He asked me what the last film I had seen had been.
This sounded strange so I said 'no' but couldn't give any sound reason why not.
Having asked around in the staffroom, 'He asked me what the last film I had seen was' has also been suggested.
The same problem arose with
"What is the longest time that you have spent out of your home country?"
Two possibilities...
She asked me what the longest time I have spent out of my country was.
She asked me what the longest time I had spent out of my country was.
If anyone knows a rule for how to report questions such as those above, I'd be really grateful if you could let me know. It had been a few years since I'd had one of these embarrassing 'I don't know' moments in class and I'd like to try and claw back some credibility.
Many thanks
Top answer
In reported speech you can backshift to match the report of a past event or you can keep the tense the same if the situation remains the same at present. I think that is what is at play here.
- In reported speech you can backshift to match the report of a past event or you can keep the tense the same if the situation remains the same at present.
- I think that is what is at play here.
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1 Answers
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In reported speech you can backshift to match the report of a past event or you can keep the tense the same if the situation remains the same at present. I think that is what is at play here.
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