Reported Speech Circle

Ideally you should run this activity after a lesson where students have been working on reported speech. If not, you should quickly run over the rules and principles of turning direct speech into indirect speech.

1. Get all the students into a circle.
2. Make a simple statement, e.g. "I speak German."
3. Point to a (good) student and tell them to turn that into indirect speech. The student should say, "Teacher said she spoke German."
4. Point to another student and get them to report what the previous student said. This should be something like, "Mario said the teacher said she spoke German."
5. Point to yet another student and get them to report what the previous student said. This should be something like, "Suzi said Mario said the teacher said she spoke German."
6. Point to yet another student and get them to report what the previous student said. This should be something like, "Arnaldo said Suzi said Mario said the teacher said she spoke German."

And work slowly round the group making the sentence longer and longer.

Once the students are familiar with this, use a beanbag. Make a statement then toss it to a random student who has to report your statement. That student then tosses the beanbag to another student who has to make reported speech about the reported speech about the statement and so on.

Variations on a Theme

Once the students are familiar with this you can bring in extra details.

• reporting verbs: whisper, shout, sing, ask
• start with a question
• encourage the class to bring in variations and play with the idea

Maria speaking to Tom:

Tom tells the class:

Katerina tells the class:

Louis whispers to Tariq:

Tariq tells the class:

Karl tells the class: