Select the option that expresses the following sentence in direct speech.
They said that they had been waiting for the bus for over an hour.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The correct answer is option 1, i.e.: “We have been waiting for the bus for over an hour,” they said.
The original indirect speech — 'They said that they had been waiting for the bus for over an hour.' — uses the past perfect continuous tense (“had been waiting”). To convert it back into direct speech, we shift to the present perfect continuous (“have been waiting”), along with quotation marks and proper speaker attribution:
“We have been waiting for the bus for over an hour,” they said.
Option 2 (“We waited…”) changes the tense incorrectly to simple past.
Option 3 (“We are waiting…”) uses present continuous, not present perfect continuous.
Option 4 (“We had waited…”) stays in past perfect, which doesn't match the structure of direct speech.
This transformation aligns with standard rules for converting past perfect continuous in indirect speech back to present perfect continuous in direct speech.