Your four verbs
Read out your four reported sentences. The class calls out the reporting verb in each, and then says whether it was neutral.
Most of them will not be. A news writer who uses said throughout is making a choice too.
Eight reporting verbs. Match each to what it says about the speaker, beyond their words.
Four reports of one meeting
Four people report the same forty minutes
A · Priya: The finance lead said the budget could not stretch to a second hire this year. She explained that the underspend everybody had seen in the spring was already committed elsewhere. She asked whether we could look at it again in January.
B · Tom: The finance lead claimed the budget would not stretch to a second hire. She insisted the spring underspend was committed, although she did not say to what. She suggested January, which is what she said last year.
C · Aisha: The finance lead pointed out that the spring underspend had already been committed, which I do not think anybody in the room knew. She admitted that meant no second hire this year. She offered to look at it again in January.
D · Karl: Finance said no. Again.
Seven statements. Decide which report each is true of. A report may be the answer more than once.
A Priya
B Tom
C Aisha
D Karl
1. Uses verbs that signal the writer does not believe the speaker.
2. Reports the same events as sympathetic rather than evasive.
3. Uses only neutral reporting verbs throughout.
4. Adds the writer’s own judgement inside the report itself.
5. Compresses forty minutes into six words and loses all of it.
6. Notes what the speaker did not say, as well as what she did.
7. Would be the most useful record for somebody who was not there.
Say these aloud and listen to where the stress lands. In a neutral report the reporting verb is unstressed and fast.
She said she was ready. — /ʃi sed/, run together, no weight on said.
She SAID she was ready. — stressed, and now you are casting doubt on it. The words are identical.
So there are two ways to signal doubt in English: choose claimed, or stress said. In writing only the first is available, which is why written reports have to be more careful about verb choice than spoken ones.
Reporting is not transcribing
Three things a report contains, and how to keep them apart
| Kind | How it is marked | Example |
|---|---|---|
| What was said | A reporting verb, backshifted | She said the budget was committed. |
| What was not said | Named explicitly | She did not say what it was committed to. |
| What you concluded | Marked as yours, outside the report | which I do not think anybody knew |
| A judgement smuggled in | A loaded reporting verb | She claimed the budget was committed. |
Four sentences have been removed from this report. Put each back where it belongs.
The project lead opened by saying that the launch date had not moved. [1]
Two people pushed back on the testing window. [2] She replied that the window had been agreed in June and that nothing had changed since.
[3] She did not say who had agreed it, and nobody asked.
The meeting closed with an action point for the testing lead to circulate the June note. [4]
Choosing the verb
One or two words per gap. The context tells you which verb is honest.
She that the spring underspend had already been committed, which nobody in the room had realised. Nuno that he had forgotten to put it in writing, which cannot have been comfortable. The head of department that the review be moved to the Tuesday. Tom that the same thing had been said last year, twice, and would not let it go. And the finance lead that any of this had been decided in advance.
One sentence — "The figures were checked." — reported four ways. Match each to what the report now says.
Report it three ways
Task card · Speaking · Groups of three · 4 minutes each
Two of you have a short disagreement about something real. The third reports it three times.
The same forty seconds reported neutrally, sympathetically, and sceptically.
- Version one: only said, asked, added. Nothing loaded.
- Version two: explained, pointed out, offered, conceded.
- Version three: claimed, insisted, would not accept, did not say.
- The two speakers say which version they would object to, and why.
Nobody may change a single fact between versions. Only the reporting verbs move. That constraint is what makes the point land.
From the three versions
Five sentences from the reports. Fix each.
1. He admitted that the deadline is Friday.
2. She claimed she will send it on Monday.
3. He explained me why it was late.
4. She told that she disagreed.
5. He suggested to move the meeting.
The verb is a claim
Two questions.
1. She claimed the figures had been checked. What has the writer added?
2. In speech, how else can you signal doubt about a report?
Before next lesson. Take the conversation you reported in Lesson 1 and write it out as six reported sentences. Underline every verb and mark whether you stepped it back.
Next lesson we do the backshift properly, including the three cases where it is genuinely optional — which is why the rule has always felt unreliable.