Direct Speech - Worksheet

The Direct Speech Worksheet series is a comprehensive set of exercises designed to help students understand and correctly use direct speech in their writing. The worksheets provide a variety of tasks that require students to identify, punctuate, and manipulate direct speech. For instance, students are asked to underline the spoken words within a sentence and circle the reporting clause, such as "Marge said" or "the boy asked." Furthermore, they must discern between direct and indirect speech, recognising sentences like "Sam shouted, 'He’s behind you!'" as direct speech, while a sentence like "Paula said she wanted a cheese sandwich" exemplifies indirect speech.

Another key aspect of the worksheets is teaching correct punctuation. Students are tasked with rewriting sentences to include proper punctuation, such as inverted commas, capitalisation, and punctuation marks within the quoted speech. For example, they would transform "I found it under my bed Jamal said" into the correctly punctuated "I found it under my bed," Jamal said. The worksheets also encourage creativity and deeper understanding by having students complete sentences with their own direct speech and change the reporting verb to something other than 'said'. This educational resource is aimed at enhancing students' grammatical skills and their ability to express dialogue effectively in writing.