1. Paco asked Shandy where he could buy a book by Rushdie.

First of all, you are going to check some reporting verbs in indirect speech. 
 
Before arriving at the hotel, Paco asked Shandy if she knew any bookshop in town where he could buy a book by Rushdie. Paco also asked her what opinion the Indian people had about Salman Rushdie. In this section Paco will learn a lot about him.
Icono IDevice Curiosity
A worldwide known writer from Mumbai
Salman Rushdie in New York in 2008
By D. Shankbone. GNU license.

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947 in Mumbay) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He achieved notability with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world.

His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the center of The Satanic Verses controversy, with protests from Muslims in several countries. Some of the protests were violent, with Rushdie facing death threats and a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in February 1989.

He was appointed Knight Bachelor for "services to literature" in June 2007, He holds the rank Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. He began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in 2007. In May 2008 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His latest novel is The Enchantress of Florence, published in June 2008.

Taken from Wikipedia.


Icono IDevice Listening activity

Salman Rushdie is interviewed by Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist.

 

1. "... in my case it was very important to look backward and not forward".
2. "I just haven't frankly found the way to do it" (referring to an autobiography).

 


Watch the video above about Salman Rushdie and then say if the statements below it are said by him (true) or not (false).


Icono de iDevice Solved exercise

1. 'I'll carry the suitcase for you.'

2. 'Would you like to have lunch with me?'

3. 'I won't wear my new dress to the party!'

4. 'Please, let me watch TV till midnight.'

5. 'Your father shouldn't drink so much alcohol.'

6. 'Don't forget to send him an e-mail.'

 

reminded / offered / advised / invited / refused / begged

 

Match the sentences with the appropriate reporting verbs.

Icono de iDevice Self-Assessment activity

Complete the sentences in reported speech using these verbs:

reminded / offered / advised / invited / refused

1) He me to start saving for my retirement.

2) He to do the washing-up because he was very tired.

3) She to carry the bags for him.

4) She me to go to the butcher's. I'm really forgetful.

5) My wife our friends for dinner.

  

Icono IDevice Curiosity
Bollywood
Bollywood dances usually follow filmi songs
By Indianhilbilly. C. Commons.

 

 

The name "Bollywood" is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, center of the American film industry. However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a physical place. Though some people deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The term "Bollywood" has its origins in the 1970s, when India overtook America as the world's largest film producer. Credit for the term has been claimed by several different people, including the lyricist, filmmaker and scholar Amit Khanna, and the journalist Bevinda Collaco.

The naming scheme for "Bollywood" was inspired by "Tollywood", the name that was used to refer to the cinema of West Bengal. Dating back to 1932, "Tollywood" was the earliest Hollywood-inspired name, referring to the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge, which rhymed with "Hollywood" and was the center of the cinema of India at the time. The name "Bollywood" later arose as the Mumbai-based film industry overtook the one in Tollygunge as the center of the Indian film industry.
Adapted from Wikipedia.
Are you ready to see an example?

 

Icono IDevice Further knowledge

Click here for some information about reported speech in Spanish.

You can practice here some exercises in reported speech.

 


In the next section we are going to study questions in reported speech. Let's go through.
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