45 Games to Practice Reported Speech

1. Reported speech reversi

Prepare cards with reported speech on one side and direct speech of the same sentence
on the other. Students have to correctly say what is on the other side to turn it over
and score one point. There are many games you can play with these cards, including
the TEFL version of Reversi/ Othello that was first described by Mario Rinvolucri in
Grammar Games and that is the subject of an upcoming article of mine.
2. Go betweens
This is also a game from a classic TEFL supplementary book that can easily be done
without access to the book (in this case Intermediate Communication Games). Two
students have such a problem with each other that they are refusing to speak, and
another student shuttles between them trying to find a compromise. The two students
need to be sitting so far apart that they cant hear the other people speak and so really
need to listen to the peacemaker, e.g. by sitting in different rooms or one half of the
students sitting in the corridor. Making both sides have complaints about the other and
giving out roleplay cards can also help set up this activity well, as can having different
groups of students working on different situations so that they cant listen into the
neighbouring teams. Possible situations to roleplay include students who have
problems with the other students behaviour in class (speaking too much, not speaking
enough, holding up the lesson because they havent done their homework, distracting
the teacher from the lesson plan by asking questions, etc- maybe leading onto
discussion of good classroom behaviour), neighbours, neighbouring countries,
married couples, or suppliers and customers who are near breaking point in their
relationship. This can also be used for non-conflict negotiations such as premarital
contracts or price negotiations. Note that students usually get into this activity so
much that they completely forget about Reported Speech, so you might want to do
this as a controlled activity where they must make an effort to use the structures you
have presented.
3. What they told you
Give the students a list of people they have probably been spoken to by in their lives
(e.g. teachers, policemen, future employers, immigration officers and market
researchers) or brainstorm such a list onto the board. Students choose one of the
people on the list and say things that this person really said to them, e.g. He asked
me whether I wanted a single or return, and the other students guess which person
from the list was speaking. As a more challenging extension, they can continue the
game with people not on the list. This can also be done as Twenty Questions, e.g.
Has this person ever asked you whether you were carrying any drugs? This game
links well with the vocabulary of jobs or practising situational language such as At
the airport. The same game can also be done with the vocabulary of relationships like
colleague, acquaintance and classmate.

4. Reported speech pairwork dictation

This idea lacks the fun element of the other games here (unless you choose or write an
amusing dialogue or one with a surprising twist), but is easy to do and check and can
lead to examination of things we usually leave out of reported speech such as well
and yes. It can also be a lead in to the similar but more fun activities below. Student
A has one persons part of a dialogue and Student B has the other persons part, and
they convert their part into reported speech and tell their partner what the person on
their worksheet said so that their partner can convert it back into direct speech (in
their heads) and write it down in the gaps on their sheet. At the end when they check
their worksheets with each other they should have identical dialogues written down.
This activity can be made more challenging by one of the students having their half of
the dialogue in mixed up order.
5. Reported speech pairwork dictation same or different
A more intellectually challenging version of pairwork dictation is giving students
similar but not identical direct speech sentences on Student A and Student B sheets.
They dictate them to each other in reported speech and work together to decide if the
original two sentences were the same or not, e.g. Student A reports Do you feel
happy? as He asked me whether I felt happy and Student B reports Are you
feeling happy? as He asked me if I was feeling happy, and they decide together
that the original sentences were different (without ever telling their partner exactly
what is on their sheet). You can add some trick questions where the direct speech
sentences are different but the reported speech versions are the same, e.g. I have been
there and I was there or I was there that day and I have been there today. They
might feel robbed if you include sentences like this as it will stop them finishing the
game successfully, but they will really pay attention when you bring that grammar
point up later!
6. Pairwork dictation match the sentences
Another good way of using sentences that sound similar when converted into reported
speech (either correctly or wrongly) is to put the same direct speech sentences on
Student As and Student Bs worksheets but mixed up and labelled 1 to 10 (for
example) on one students and a to j on the other. They then dictate them to each other
in reported speech and decide which ones are the same.
7. Pairwork dictation match the dialogue pairs
Rather than matching identical sentences as above, you can add extra language and
challenge by the students trying to match up typical functional language sentence
pairs such as Would you like anything else? on Student As sheet and No, thats all
thanks on Student Bs. The sentences on their worksheets can be given in reported
speech for them just to read out and convert back to direct speech in their heads while
trying to work out which typical sentences or (more challenging) be given as direct
speech for them to convert to reported speech when they tell them to their partner as
in the games above.
8. Reported Speech sentence completion guessing game
Give the students a list of sentence stems that should be completed with reported
speech such as I forgot to tell someone, or Someone told me that I. They
complete as many sentences as they can and then read out only the part they have
written for the other students to guess which sentence that comes from.

9. Guess the backshift

Students tell their partner(s) something that was said to them in direct speech (maybe
using the air speech marks gesture), and their partner(s) convert it into reported
speech, using the right kind of backshift or not by guessing whether it is something
that is generally true about them, whether it is something their brother always says to
them or whether it was a one off thing that is no longer true, e.g. choosing to convert
My brother said You look sad to Your brother said that you looked sad or Your
brother (often) says that you look sad/ your brother once said that you always look
sad depending on whether they think that is generally true or not.
10. The thing he ever said
Give prompts containing superlatives for real things people said to them, e.g. The
worst thing your siblings have said to you or The best advice you have ever had.
Students tell their partner(s) one of these things, and their partners guess which
prompt it refers to.
11. Referring to who guessing game
Students report something they said or heard about someone else, e.g. gossip about
someone famous, news about a politician, a reviewers opinion on someones acting
or a colleague slagging off their boss, and the other students guess who was being
spoken about.
12. Which occasion
Students tell their partners something that was said to them at an important time, e.g.
when they graduated from university or the first time their parents talked to them
about sex, and their partners guess which occasion that thing was said at. The list of
occasions can be given as a worksheet or brainstormed onto the board. This topic can
easily be extended into an interesting cross cultural discussion on the traditional lack
of school graduation ceremonies in the UK etc.
13. And this is how I felt sentence completion
Students report something that was said to them or they heard that they had a strong
emotional reaction to and the other students guess what their reaction was. This ties in
well with a lesson on adjectives, and you can maybe give them a worksheet with some
suggested adjectives on or brainstorm them before the activity, such as and I felt
sad/ hungry/ romantic/ nostalgic/ old/ young/ flattered
14. Reported mingling
Almost any mingling activity (e.g. Find Someone Who) can be extended to include
reported speech by people reporting back to their partners or the class what they
learnt. Before doing this you will need to decide whether you want to encourage them
to use Reported Speech or whether it is something you hope will come up naturally
and that you might bring up later in an error correction stage.
15. Real or imagined reported speech
This one works well with students whose memories freeze under the stress of
speaking English or who dont want to give away too much personal information.
Students report something from prompts such as those described above, and then the
other students guess whether that was really said to them or whether it was just made
up.

16. Storytelling
Any storytelling activity should include people speaking to each other, and so can be
used in a class on Reported Speech just by telling them to use backshift etc when
telling the story. This is especially useful if you have recently done narrative tenses,
especially the Past Perfect, as they come up both in telling the plot of the story and in
the Reported Speech.
17. Storytelling with reported speech verb prompts
You can add to the amount of Reported Speech produced in a storytelling activity by
giving them cards they must use within the story with words like apologise,
promise and threat. You can then add to the competition element by making the
person or team who manages to use all the cards the winner.
18. Reported arguments competition
Another way you can use competition is to get students to take turns reporting a
conversation that it is possible to say someone won, e.g. two people arguing, blaming
the other, boasting, two people complimenting a third person, offering more and more
help or bigger and bigger presents, or insults. Alternatively, you can get them to do
that competitive conversation as a roleplay and then report back to the class how they
won. Examples for either game would be And then I said that you were to blame
because you had forgotten to turn to oven off, Thats true, but I reminded you that
you had forced me to cook breakfast that morning when I suggested just having
cornflakes.
19. Problem pages
This is another commonly used activity for another language point (in this case the
language of advice) which can be easily adapted for Reported Speech practice.
Students write letters to newspaper agony aunts or their best friends including
something someone said that perturbed them and that they dont know how to react
to, e.g. My boyfriend said that (I was too fat) or My husband promised to (buy me
a car 10 years ago but he never has and now he has bought a new one for himself).
The first parts of these sentences can be given to them as sentence stems to help them
write the letters. The other students then write replies giving them advice and the
people who wrote the problems decide which reply contains the best advice and what
that reply said (hopefully using Reported Speech in that stage too).
20. Did it actually happen?
Students report things they or other people said about what was the future at that time
but has now passed, such as New Year resolutions, promises, arrangements and
predictions. The other person then guesses whether it came true or not. With some
research, you can also do the same thing with predictions, promises etc famous people
made, e.g. predictions about future technology and promises by politicians, as some of
the ones that were never going to come true are quite amusing.
21. Did I do it?
You can play a similar game to Did It Actually Happen? above by students reporting
advice, warnings etc they were given and their partners guessing whether they
followed it or not.

22. Rotating roleplays

This is a great and much neglected way of organising roleplays that naturally includes
a lot of reported speech. Half the students stay seated and the other students go round
from table to table to find out how the information that each person has is different,
e.g. pretending to be parents choosing schools to send their children to or someone
attending different job interviews. As the last stage of the activity people who rotated
get together and people who stayed still get together, and each group decides which
the best choices was, hopefully reporting back what they heard with Reported Speech.
23. Compare the storytellers
This is another game that involves listening to several people, this time telling the
same story. The person listening then has to use Reported Speech to list the
differences they heard in the two versions of the story. This can be made more
intellectually stimulating by the person who listened also having to guess if the
differences were due to memory loss or having made the details up as they went
along. You can also add another stage and more Reported Speech by two people
hearing the story from two different people, and then getting together to compare
what they heard and so try to spot the differences.
24. Stories spot the deliberate mistakes
The games in Compare the Storytellers above can also be played with the differences
in the stories being added deliberately. Give out stories and tell pairs of students to
change three small details on one of their versions. They then tell the stories and see if
the people listening can spot the differences. A simpler version is for one person to tell
a story from memory and the people listening to try and spot what bits they changed,
either from their body language, pausing etc giving it away and logical
inconsistencies in the story or from what they can remember from the story when they
read the original version themselves. Any differences they think they have spotted can
then be reported to the class.
25. Match the stories
A version of the storytelling activities above that takes a bit more preparation from the
teacher but adds a mingling stage is to prepare one variation on the story (usually only
with slight changes) per two students and get them to go around the room telling their
stories to each other to try and find the one person who has exactly the same story.
You can make sure there is Reported Speech in this by putting Reported Speech into
the stories you give them, and by making sure that when two people meet only one
person tells their story and the other just reports on any differences, e.g. I dont think
our stories are the same, because you said that he had been there for seven years, but
in my story he has only been there for seven days. This activity can also be done
with half the students having the stories and the other half having comic strips that
represent them- this involves even more preparation, but can be a good lead into them
telling stories based on picture prompts.
26. Story remixes
Another storytelling spot the differences activity that can be done with picture
prompts is getting them to work in pairs to put a series of pictures on their worksheets
into order to tell a story, then telling that story to another pair for them to spot whether
their choice of order was the same or different. They should then use Reported Speech
when reporting those differences back to the person who just asked the story or to the
whole class.

27. Reported speech alibi game

The Alibi Game is one of the all time TEFL classics- pairs of students pretend to be a
suspect for a crime and that persons alibi and are questioned separately to try to find
differences between their versions of the cover story and so to be able to declare that
their story a fabrication and label them as the guilty party. You can add Reported
Speech to this by encouraging them to report on their conversations with the alibi on
the night of the crime, and even more by the suspect and alibi being questioned
separately by two different groups of police officers (probably in different rooms) and
then the police officers comparing what they heard from the two people to try and
find differences.
28. Reported speech running dictations (Three man dictations)
A running dictation is another classic TEFL activity- students run backwards and
forwards trying to retain the information they read or heard until they get to their
partner and can report it to them so that they can complete the worksheet they have
been given. If the source of what they have to remember is another student sat in the
corridor or another room rather than a poster or worksheet, they should have to use
Reported Speech when telling their partner what they heard. One example of a game
that can be adapted to a three man dictation approach is Whats My Line. The
running student asks the students outside the room questions about their jobs based on
the information their partner sitting down has and comes back with the information
and runs back out to ask more questions until they have worked out which student has
the same worksheet and which students are just making their answers up.
29. Reported speech Chinese whispers
One person whispers something in their neighbours ear and they then whisper it to
the next person using Reported Speech. This continues along the row until the last
person converts what they hear into direct speech and says it out loud. If there are
differences between the first and last version of the sentence (and there usually are),
you can then use even more Reported Speech in tracking where the sentence went
wrong. You can add a comic touch and learning of each others names by asking them
to report each sentence at the whispering stage as Juan told me that Henri had told
him that Masako had said that she wanted a cup of coffee with two sugars.
30. Reported speech jigsaw videos
Half of the class watch the first half of a short video (for example an episode of
Friends), and the other half (in a different room) watch the last half. While listening
they make notes on what people said. When the class comes back together they report
some of the things the characters said in their half of the video, and people who
watched the other half guess who said that thing and why they think it was that
person. If your students are unlikely to come up with such sentences themselves, you
could give them a sheet with dialogue from their half of the video to label with who
said it while they are watching. They then turn it into Reported Speech to get the other
half of the class to guess who said it in the next stage. A more complex but
cooperative version is to get different groups of students watching short segments and
then report what people said in order to work out which order those segments should
be in (switching to reporting the action as well as the speech if they get stuck).

31. Reporting the whole course

Students report something someone in the class (including the teacher) said, and the
other students try to guess or remember who said it. This is nice near the end of a
course or as part of a revision lesson.
32. Tell on his errors
Students watch a segment of a video where a character makes stupid verbal blunders,
e.g. the Rowan Atkinson priest character in Four Weddings and a Funeral and listen
for things they shouldnt have said. When you stop the video they get one point for
each mistake they report but lose one point if the thing they report was actually what
the person meant to say/ should have said.
33. Weve heard that story before
Students write a story and add one of the events (e.g. the vase getting broken) a
second time where it shouldnt be. When they change groups their new partner has to
listen carefully to the story and report anything they hear repeated with phrases like
But you said you had already shot him dead before the police arrived. With less
creative classes or to save time, this activity can also be done with them being given
the stories but adding the repeated parts themselves.
34. Its my story, Ill mix it up if I want to
Students work together to put a worksheet of pictures or words in some order to make
a story, but without writing anything down to remind them what the story was and the
order they put the pictures or words in. They then split up to tell their story separately
to another pair of students. The two pairs of students then get together, and the people
who were told the story try to find differences between the two versions, and report
them to the storytellers.
35. Report him for that topic
Students report speech they heard in their lives, heard in a previous jigsaw listening or
video stage, or have been given quotes from on a worksheet, and their partners guess
what subject was being talked about.
36. Report that man!
Students report something that was said, e.g. quotes by famous people they all know
or that they have been given, and they guess who said it (maybe from a list of possible
people).
37. Report them and rank them
Students are given different lists of quotes and have to agree on a ranking of all of
them in terms of how true they are, how funny they are, how inspirational they are
etc.
38. Guess what they said about it
Report the topic and the person speaking and students guess if what was said was
positive or negative, and be more specific about the opinions if they can. This works
both for things famous people said and things they really heard in their own lives.

39. Report, analyse and report

One student reports another students answers to a questionnaire, and the third student
analyses their personality, most suitable blind date, most suitable job etc- either from
an analysis they have been given or from their own imagination. The second person
can then report the third persons judgements back to the first person to see whether
they think the conclusions are true or not.
40. Accumulating mingle
As students walk around class doing a mingle activity such as Find Someone Who,
they have to not only find out about the person they are speaking to but also
everything their partner has found out so far. This continues until they know one thing
about each person in the class or have answered all the questions on their worksheet,
at which point they can sit down.
41. Reporting stereotypes
Students guess which nationality is talking about which nationality, with sentences
from the teachers experience, from questionnaires that have been used in several
countries (these come up in the news sometimes), or from the other students
imaginations about what the British think about Americans etc.
42. Guess the it
Students report a sentence with a reference word like it, that, him or one in it,
then the other students guess what it refers to. This can be done with jigsaw videos
and listenings, as explained in the previous article on reported speech games.
43. Tell me more tell me more
Students report something that someone said but leave out some crucial information at
the end, e.g. Brad Pitt said that Jennifer Aniston was terrible at, and the other
students try to guess the missing words, being given hints if needed.
44. Match that grammar
Write some sentences in both reported and direct speech and split them down the
middle. Put the first halves of the reported speech versions on the Student A
worksheet and the end halves of the direct speech sentences on the Student B
worksheet, but mixed up. Students try to work out which sentences match and to write
the complete sentences in both direct and reported speech on their worksheet
(obviously not showing their worksheet to their partner until the end of the activity).
45. Guess the gossip
Students make gossip sentences with Yesterday I heard that etc, maybe from cue
cards like Michael Jackson or two-timing, then the other students guess if they
really heard that from elsewhere or just made it up on the spot. This can be used for
love vocab, business vocab, crime vocab, education, politics etc.