Question

Change the following statement into indirect speech.
He says, “I don’t want to play any more”.
A) He says that he doesn’t want to play any more.
B) He says that I don’t want to play any more.
C) He says that I didn’t want to play any more.
D) He says that he didn’t want to play any more.

Answer 1

Hint: Indirect speech is a means of expressing questions and content of statements without quoting them in inverted commas as we do in direct speech. For example-
Direct speech- “Where do they live?”
Indirect speech- You asked me where they live.

Complete answer:
Direct speech describes when something is being repeated in the same or in exact manner and they are usually in between the pair of inverted commas and indirect speech is opposite of direct speech as indirect speech does not include inverted commas.
Option A) He says that he doesn’t want to play any more – is the correct answer because it follows the rule of the direct and indirect speech and the rule that this option follows is that reporting verb in the given sentence ‘says’ is in present tense so there is no need to change and the pronoun I changed into ‘he’. This option is the correct answer.

Option B) He says that I don’t want to play any more – is an incorrect answer because pronoun ‘I’ does not change into ‘he’ as per the rule of conversion. So, this is an incorrect answer.

Option C) He says that I didn’t want to play any more - is an incorrect answer because pronoun ‘I’ does not change into ‘he’ as per the rule of conversion. So, this is an incorrect answer.

Option D) He says that he didn’t want to play any more – is an incorrect answer because it wasn't used with all the people in the simple past. So, this is an incorrect answer because didn’t cannot be used when we are converting it into indirect speech instead it should be does not.

Direct speech- He says, “I don’t want to play any more”.
Indirect speech- He says that he doesn’t want to play any more.

Hence, the correct answer is Option A.

Note: The given sentence is a statement i.e. I don’t want to play any more. So, to make conversion i.e. from direct to indirect speech rule to be followed. So, according to the rules if the reporting verb is in the present tense or future tense, the reported verb is not changed i.e. the reporting verb 'says', is in the present form. Therefore, the reported verb should be in the present tense.