Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate option.
Jack: “I have spoken to Tom.”
Jack ________ to Tom.
a- says that he had spoken
b- said that he had spoken
c- says that he speaks
d- had spoken that he will say

Answer 1

Hint:There are two types of reported speech- Direct and Indirect speech. Direct speech expresses the original words spoken by the speaker, whereas Indirect speech expresses the words spoken by a speaker in the past.

Complete answer:
Let’s look at the rules that we need to follow while changing a sentence from direct to indirect speech-
1) We remove the quotation marks in indirect speech.
2) The tense of the verb usually changes in the past tense.
3) The pronouns also change depending upon their use in the sentence.
In the given question: We know that Jack has spoken to Tom. Hence, the correct answer is; Jack said that he had spoken to Tom. The tense of the auxiliary verb, ‘has’ changed into ‘had’.
Now, let’s examine the given options-
Option a- ‘says that he had spoken’ is an incorrect option because we cannot use the reporting verb, ‘says’ with the past tense form of a verb.
Option b- ‘said that he had spoken’ is the correct option because we can see the use of appropriate reporting verb and corresponding tense form.
Option c- ‘says that he speaks’ is an incorrect option because we cannot use the reporting verb ‘says’ with the past tense form of a verb.
Option d- ‘had spoken that he will say’ is an incorrect option because it is grammatically inappropriate. The correct answer is Option ‘b’.

Note:
We put direct speech in quotation marks to state the exact words or quotes of a speaker while indirect speech lacks quotation marks because we have rephrased the speaker’s wordings.