Q16
EnglishVoice, Narration & Sentence Transformation
Choose the correct option to frame a question from the following sentence, using the appropriate punctuation - I asked him why he wasn't in class.
- a.I asked him – "Why you not in class?"
- b.I asked him, "Why you are not in class?"
- c.I asked him: 'Why you are not in class?'
- d.I asked him, "Why are you not in class?"
Answer: (D) I asked him, "Why are you not in class?"
A direct question needs inverted word order (auxiliary before subject: "are you"), a comma after the reporting clause, double quotation marks and a question mark inside them: I asked him, "Why are you not in class?" Option (A) has no verb at all, while (B) and (C) keep the statement order "you are", which belongs to indirect speech. Note also the tense: "wasn't" in the reported version goes back to the present "are" in the direct question, because indirect speech had back-shifted the tense.