Reported Speech and Passive Voice for Bihar STET English: Rules and Worked Examples

Voice change and reported speech together make up roughly 15 percent of the questions in the previous-year English sets we analysed, and both are fully rule-based. This post gives you the rules compactly, with original examples, so you can solve these questions in under 30 seconds each.

Part 1: Reported (indirect) speech

The tense-shift table

When the reporting verb is in the past (said, told, asked), the verb inside the reported clause moves one step back.

Direct	Indirect
Simple present	Simple past
Present continuous	Past continuous
Present perfect	Past perfect
Simple past	Past perfect
will / can / may	would / could / might

Example: She said, "I am reading a novel." becomes She said that she was reading a novel.

Two exceptions that examiners love. If the reported statement is a universal truth or habitual fact, the tense does not shift: The teacher said, "The earth moves round the sun" becomes The teacher said that the earth moves round the sun. And if the reporting verb is in the present or future (He says, He will say), no shift is needed.

Pronoun changes

First-person pronouns follow the subject of the reporting clause, second-person pronouns follow the object, and third-person pronouns stay the same.

Example: Rina said to Meena, "I will help you." becomes Rina told Meena that she would help her.

Time and place words

Direct	Indirect
now	then
today	that day
tomorrow	the next day / the following day
yesterday	the previous day
here	there
this / these	that / those

Questions, commands and exclamations

• Yes/no questions use if or whether and drop the question word order: He asked, "Do you play cricket?" becomes He asked if I played cricket.
• Wh-questions keep the wh-word with statement order: She asked, "Where do you live?" becomes She asked where I lived.
• Commands and requests use told, ordered, requested + infinitive: The captain said to the team, "Please wait here." becomes The captain requested the team to wait there.
• Exclamations use exclaimed with joy/sorrow/surprise that: He said, "Alas! I am ruined." becomes He exclaimed sadly that he was ruined.

Extended-text trap

The syllabus says "reported speech in extended texts". Convert a short dialogue by treating each line separately, then join them with and, adding that, and then asked. Keep the tense and pronoun logic consistent across every line.

Part 2: Active and passive voice

The pattern

Passive = object of the active sentence becomes the subject + a form of be + past participle (V3) + by + original subject.

The form of be carries the tense:

Tense	Active	Passive
Simple present	She writes a letter.	A letter is written by her.
Present continuous	She is writing a letter.	A letter is being written by her.
Present perfect	She has written a letter.	A letter has been written by her.
Simple past	She wrote a letter.	A letter was written by her.
Past continuous	She was writing a letter.	A letter was being written by her.
Past perfect	She had written a letter.	A letter had been written by her.
Simple future	She will write a letter.	A letter will be written by her.
Modals	She can write a letter.	A letter can be written by her.

There is no passive form for the perfect continuous tenses in standard exam usage; examiners rarely set them.

Special cases that appear in exams

• Imperatives: Close the door. becomes Let the door be closed. (or You are requested to close the door in some key styles). Check the options.
• Questions: Who wrote this poem? becomes By whom was this poem written?
• Two objects: He gave me a book. becomes A book was given to me by him. / I was given a book by him.
• Verbs that do not take a passive: intransitive verbs (arrive, sleep, go) cannot be made passive. If an option tries, it is wrong.
• Dropping the agent: when the doer is unknown, obvious or general (people, someone), the by phrase is dropped: Somebody has stolen my bag. becomes My bag has been stolen.

How to practise

1. Write the tense of the sentence first, then the matching passive frame from the table.
2. For reported speech, do the three changes in order: tense, pronoun, time word.
3. After each answer, read the converted sentence aloud. Wrong options usually sound wrong.
4. Do 20 conversions a day for a week, then mix them into timed sets.

Practice reported speech and passive voice on Pareeksha

The Bihar STET English series has 25-question timed sets for this: Change of Speech (Direct/Indirect), 5 sets of 25; Change of Voice (Active/Passive), 10 sets; and Tenses and Verb Forms, 10 sets. Each set is a fixed paper, so you can compare your attempts over time. The exam page has the pattern and syllabus in one place.

These questions come from previous-year questions of comparable teacher exams (KVS, EMRS, NVS and state TGT/PGT papers) on the same topics, not from Bihar STET papers themselves.

Next steps

See how these topics rank in our weightage analysis, then continue with error spotting and subject-verb agreement. Test yourself in the free test series.