Question

Change the following from direct to reported speech.
The girl asked her mother, “When am I going to have a holiday?”
(A) The girl asked her mother when I am going to have a holiday.
(B) The girl asked her mother when she was going to have a holiday.
(C) The girl asked her mother when am I going to have a holiday.
(D) The girl asked her mother when was she going to have a holiday.

Answer 1

Hint: There are general rules to convert direct into indirect speech. First of all, remove all the inverted commas or quotation marks. After that, put a full stop at the end of the sentence. Additionally, present tenses are changed into past tense.

Complete answer:
To start with the question, first, understand the meaning of direct and indirect speech. Direct speech means conveying other’s words in an exact manner by using inverted commas whereas indirect speech means sharing the other words by making our own words and conveying what another person has said.
According to the question, we need to change the direct speech into an indirect one. Let’s analyse the correct option:

A) The girl asked her mother when I am going to have a holiday- It is an incorrect answer.
It is an irrelevant choice because to change it into indirect speech we need to convert the present tense into past one. But the given option is in the present continuous tense.

B) The girl asked her mother when she was going to have a holiday- It is the correct answer.
It is an appropriate choice because the question is in the present continuous tense and we have to convert it into the past continuous tense. Hence, the given option is in past continuous tense along with no full stop and any quotation mark or inverted commas.

C) The girl asked her mother when am I going to have a holiday- It is an incorrect answer.
Given option is an interrogative form but to convert direct into indirect one we cannot use interrogative form. The tense should change from present to past. Hence, it is not suitable.

D) The girl asked her mother when was she going to have a holiday- it is an incorrect answer
The given option is in the past form but a sentence is an interrogative form. But as per rule, we have to change present continuous into past continuous. Therefore, it is wrong.

Thus the correct answer is option (B) i.e, The girl asked her mother when she was going to have a holiday.

Note: The basic rule to convert speech is that the present tense changes into corresponding past tense. The easiest way to convert them is by placing the adverbs of nearness into those of distance. For Example-’ here’ is converted into ‘there’.Another instance is last night changes into the previous night.