Choose the correct indirect form of the given sentence:
The girls said, “How beautiful the valley looks from here!”
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → The girls exclaimed that the valley looked very beautiful from there.
Changing an exclamation into indirect speech:
| Change | Direct | Indirect | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reporting verb | said | exclaimed | The girls are expressing strong feeling with “How beautiful ...!”, so “said” becomes “exclaimed”. |
| Joining word | , “ ” | that | The exclamation becomes a plain statement, so it is joined with “that”. |
| Exclamation | How beautiful the valley looks | the valley looked very beautiful | “How beautiful” becomes “very beautiful”. The words go in statement order and the mark “!” is dropped. |
| Tense change | looks | looked | The reporting verb “said” is in the past, so “looks” becomes “looked”. |
| Time and place words | here | there | The words are reported later and from another place, so “here” becomes “there”. |
| Full sentence | The girls said, “How beautiful the valley looks from here!” | The girls exclaimed that the valley looked very beautiful from there. |
“What a ...!” changes in the same way: What a big house! → that it was a very big house. Example: Rohan said, “What a clever dog!” → Rohan exclaimed that it was a very clever dog.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: The girls exclaimed that the valley looked very beautiful from here. — Incorrect. “Here” is left unchanged. In indirect speech it becomes “there”.
Option 3: The girls said that how beautiful the valley looked from there. — Incorrect. The exclamation “how beautiful” is kept after “that”. In indirect speech it must become a statement with “very”.
Option 4: The girls exclaimed that the valley looks very beautiful from there. — Incorrect. “Looks” should change to “looked” after the past verb “said”.