A sentence is provided in indirect speech. From the four given options, choose the one that most accurately conveys the sentence in its corresponding direct speech.
My sister said that she was going to the market.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Correct Answer
My sister said, "I am going to the market."
Explanation
Core Meaning: The sentence records a statement made by the speaker's sister about her immediate plan or active movement toward a marketplace. To solve this quickly for an exam, reverse the rules of narration to convert indirect speech back into direct speech. The past continuous tense "was going" in indirect speech must be shifted forward to the present continuous tense "am going" inside the quotation marks. Concurrently, the third-person pronoun "she" must revert to the first-person pronoun "I" because the sister was speaking about herself. Option 1 is the only choice that accurately applies both the tense change and the pronoun reversal while inserting the mandatory comma and quotation marks.
Key Points
Core Definition: Converting indirect narration back into direct speech requires shifting past tenses to their corresponding present forms and reverting third-person pronouns to first-person perspectives.
Grammatical Role: Restructuring a subordinate noun clause into an independent, punctuated direct quotation containing a present continuous verb.