The following items have a sentence in direct or indirect speech with four options. One of the options converts the direct or indirect speech into indirect or direct correctly. Select the correct option and mark your response on the Answer Sheet. Convert from indirect speech to direct speech: The teacher asked her students why they had been quiet in the previous class.
B. The teacher said to her students, "Why were you quiet in the previous class ?"
The given sentence is in indirect speech. To convert it into direct speech, the reporting verb 'asked' changes to 'said to'. The conjunction 'why' remains as the question word. The past perfect tense 'had been' in the indirect speech changes to the simple past tense 'were' in the direct speech. The third-person pronoun 'they' changes to the second-person pronoun 'you' to match the object of the reporting verb ('her students'). Option (2) correctly applies all these rules, whereas Option (4) misses the definite article 'the' before 'previous class'. Direct speech: The teacher said to her students, "Why were you quiet in the previous class ?" Answer: The teacher said to her students, "Why were you quiet in the previous class ?"
Related: General Ability — English · All PYQ Banks