The importance and use of direct and indirect speech (reported speech)

This is not simply an activity of changing one to the other. The focus here is about how to make your writing more mature. The first two thirds of the worksheet are an explanation of how indirect speech can be used to avoid the narrator relaying every part of a conversation. It warns against long, tedious and even boring conversations, showing how indirect speech can speed up the narrative to keep the reader interested and the author in control.
The last third of the sheet shows a conversation using direct speech and here the pupils should be challenged to seek out the more important and less important parts in order to turn some of the conversation into indirect speech.