Reported speech is used when you want to tell someone else what a person said before.

In reported speech,we use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put '[person] says' and then the sentence.

Example:

• Direct speech  : I like ice cream.
• Reported speech: She says(that) she likes ice cream.

  Here we don't need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person' from 'I' to 'she', for example. We also may need to change words like 'my' and 'your'.

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech.

Example:

• Direct speech  : I like ice cream.
• Reported speech: She said(that) she liked ice cream.

  Here,the tense in reported speech is one tense back in time from the tense in direct speech.

(NOTE :
When speaking English, we can choose if we want to use 'that' or not. We have put it in brackets () to show that it's optional. It's exactly the same if you use 'that' or if you don't use 'that'.)

Reported Questions

There are two types of questions: WH-question and Yes/No question.

In reported speech, the word orders change.

In WH-question, the WH-words (what, where, why, how, etc.) remains the same.

...ASK ME + WH-WORDS

In Yes/ No question, the auxiliary is deleted. We use if/ whether instead.

... ASK ME + IF/ WHETHER

Reported commands/requests

...ASK ME + (NOT) TO DO SOMETHING