It’s happened again. I
have ploughed my way through the pages on reported speech in the course book,
watched my learners grind to a stand still as they struggled with backshift and
deictic reference (“I’m fed up with this” → she said she was fed up with it)
and dreamed up practice activities that were as close to everyday usage as I
could imagine. Only to be hit with the thought : hold on, why have I not
covered the (far simpler) contemporary way of reporting on conversations - using direct speech with reporting expressions
such as “like” and “goes”?
My children (age four and six) frequently recount entire
conversations using “was like”. On the rare occasions they do use reported
speech it is to upbraid me on promises I have broken: “But you said we could go
swimming!”
“So she goes, don’t do that and I was like why not? And then
she was like, yeah…whatever…” Exchanges such as this one can be heard everyday,
and for the teacher and learner of English they have great appeal. To paraphrase Phil Collins, no backshift required.
This does not mean to say we should not teach reported speech
to our learners. It is commonly found in written English (particularly
newspaper reports) and used in spoken English by large numbers of people who would regard expressions such as “like”
and “go” to be sloppy, incorrect English.
However, like them or not, these expressions have become part
of our language, and I believe we need to make sure our learners are able to
use and understand them.
