Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate option.
Mother: “We are going to have supper.”
Mother says ________.
a- they are going to have supper
b- they were going to have supper
c- that they would have supper
d- they won’t have supper
e- they haven’t had supper yet

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:
 As given in the hint, we put direct speech in quotation marks to state the exact words or quotes of a speaker.
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.
In the given question- We can conclude that Mother says they are going to have supper. Here, we have not changed the tense because we can see the use of the reporting verb ‘says’.
Now, let’s examine the given options-
Option a- ‘they are going to have supper’ is the correct option because there is no change in the tense of the verb.
Option b- ‘they were going to have supper’ is an incorrect option because we cannot change the tense of the verb.
Option c- ‘that they would have supper’ is an incorrect option because we cannot change the tense of the verb.
Option d- ‘they won’t have supper’ is an incorrect option because we cannot change the tense of the verb.
Option e- ‘they haven’t had supper yet’ is an incorrect option because we cannot change the tense of the verb. The correct answer is Option ‘a’.

Note:
Keep in mind, the tense of the verb doesn’t change if the reporting verb is in the present tense form. For example- (1) She says, “They will go home.” (2) She says they will go home.