Reporting verbs

complain / report / admit / deny / explain

1. Reporting verbs.

Patty claimed that she had been knocked over.

Some other common reporting verbs that follow this pattern are:

complain
report
admit
deny
explain

Rewrite these sentences using the pattern verb + that.

For example:

"I lost my way," he explained.
He explained that he had lost his way.

2. Reporting verbs and nouns.

The verbs in exercise 1 also have noun forms:

claim -> claim
complain -> complaint
report -> report
admit -> admission
deny -> denial
explain -> explanation

For example:

Patty claimed that she had been knocked over, but nobody believed her claim.

Complete the sentences by writing a suitable verb or noun.

3. Reporting verbs with -ing.

Some of the verbs we have been looking at also take -ing. For example:

She admitted stealing the money.
She denied
She reported 		finding some money.

But not:

She claimed finding some money.
She explained finding some money.

Choose the best way of completing these sentences. Sometimes both possibilities are correct.

 

For more information about reported thoughts see the Grammar Reference.