Choose the option which correctly transforms the following sentence from Direct to Indirect:
The President said, "It gives me a great pleasure to be here this evening".
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The President said that it gave him a great pleasure to be there that evening.
| Direct | Indirect |
|---|---|
| The President said, "It gives me a great pleasure to be here this evening". | The President said that it gave him a great pleasure to be there that evening. |
Statement in indirect speech:
- Reporting verb: "said" stays said; the statement is joined with that, and the inverted commas go.
- Tense change: the reporting verb is in the past, so the simple present "gives" moves back to the simple past gave.
- Pronoun changes: "me" (the President himself) becomes him.
- Words of nearness: "here" becomes there, and "this evening" becomes that evening.
Example: She said, "I am happy here." → She said that she was happy there.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: The President was saying that he got immense pleasure that evening. — Incorrect.
- The reporting verb "said" is changed to "was saying".
- "A great pleasure" becomes "immense pleasure", and "to be there" is dropped, so the words of the speaker are not reported faithfully.
Option 3: The President says that he was getting a great pleasure from being here that evening — Incorrect.
- The past reporting verb "said" is changed to the present "says".
- "Here" is not changed to "there", and "was getting ... from being" alters the structure of the sentence.
Option 4: It was a great pleasure for the President that evening over there. — Incorrect. There is no reporting verb at all; the sentence is a rewritten statement, not reported speech, and "over there" is not the change of "here".