Question

Rewrite the following sentence in indirect speech.

The postman said to her, “I have a letter for you”.
The postman told her ________.

a)That I have a letter for her
b)That she had a letter for her
c)That he has a letter for you
d)That he had a letter for her

Answer 1

Hint: Simple present tense gets converted into simple past tense in indirect speech, as it is a reported form of speech. It is not the exact quote someone said.

Complete answer:

When we want to report something someone said without speech marks, we use indirect speech. It is also called reported speech.
When you convert a sentence from direct to indirect speech, the tense changes. In this case, the tense of the given sentence would change from simple present tense to simple past tense. The pronouns also change as the speaker changes. In this case, they would change from the first and third person to only the third person.
Now, let’s look at our options:

a)that I have a letter for you - This sentence does not have the correct pronoun usage, since both pronouns are not in the third person. It also has an incorrect tense. So, this is an incorrect option.
b)that she had a letter for her - This sentence has the correct tense, but not the correct pronoun. The postman is not a female. So, this is an incorrect option.
c)that he has a letter for you - This sentence does not have correct pronoun usage and has an incorrect tense. So, it is an incorrect option.
d)that he had a letter for her - This sentence is in the correct tense and it has correct pronoun usage i.e. they are in the third person. So, it is the correct option.

Note: Identify the grammatically correct and the most contextually sound option. Converting direct speech to indirect speech has to follow certain rules in order to be grammatically correct.