GNDU B.Com (Bachelor of Commerce)

Chapter 4: English-I: Grammar in Use — Reported Speech, Conditionals and Prepositions

Summary

This unit continues the grammar course with the more advanced structures that occur frequently in business and academic English. Reported (indirect) speech is used to report what someone said without quoting their exact words; it involves changes in pronouns, in tense (a backshift, for example present to past after a past reporting verb) and in expressions of time and place, and different rules apply to reporting statements, questions, commands and requests. The passive voice shifts the focus from the doer to the action or the receiver of the action, formed with the appropriate tense of "to be" plus the past participle; it is common in formal and impersonal writing. Conditional sentences express the relationship between a condition and its result and have main types: the zero conditional for general truths, the first conditional for likely future situations, the second conditional for unlikely or imaginary present situations, and the third conditional for unreal past situations. Relative clauses, introduced by who, which, that, whose and where, add information about a noun. Prepositions show relationships of time, place and direction, such as in, on, at, by, for and since, and they often combine with verbs to form phrasal verbs. Connectors and linking words join ideas to make writing coherent. Mastery of these structures, practised through transformation, joining and error-correction exercises, equips students to write accurate, formal and well-connected English for study and the workplace.

Key terms

Important questions

Practice quiz