Identify the correct conversion of the following sentence in Direct Speech into Indirect Speech:
She said to me, “What are you doing?”
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → She asked me what I was doing.
Wh-question in indirect speech:
| Change | Direct | Indirect | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reporting verb | said to | asked | “Said to” becomes “asked”, because the words are a question. |
| Linking word | “ ” (quotation marks) | what | The question word itself, “what”, joins the two parts. |
| Word order | What are you doing? | what I was doing | The question becomes a statement, subject + verb: “what I was doing”, not “what was I doing”. The question mark is dropped. |
| Tense change | are doing | was doing | “Are doing” becomes “was doing”, because the reporting verb is in the past. |
| Pronoun change | you | I | “You” becomes “I”, since the question was put to the speaker. |
| Full sentence | She said to me, “What are you doing?” | She asked me what I was doing. |
Example: He said to me, “Where are you going?” → He asked me where I was going.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: She said to me what I was doing. — Incorrect. "said to" must change to "asked" when a question is reported.
Option 2: She asked me what was I to do. — Incorrect.
- It keeps the question order "was I".
- "to do" changes the meaning: she asked about my present activity, not about what I should do.
Option 4: She told me what I was doing. — Incorrect. "told" reports a statement. It turns her question into information she gave me.