Examples:
1. The teacher told the students to study English every day. (note: here we can also say “The teacher said to the students that they should study English every day.”)
This is Indirect Speech, also called Reported Speech. The teacher’s actual words were “You should study English every day.”
The structure here is tell someone to do something
2. He told me about the party, but I couldn’t go. (note: we could also say here, “He said to me that the party was happening, but I couldn’t go.” but we cannot say “He said to me about the party but I could not go.”)
This is also Indirect speech. His actual words were something like “There is a party. Shall we go?”
The structure here is tell someone about something
3. He told me that he was planning to resign from his job. (note: we could also say here, “ He said to me that he was planning to resign from his job.”)
This is also Indirect speech. His actual words were “I am planning to resign from my job”)
The structure here is tell someone + noun clause.
Here, the NOUN CLAUSE is “that he was planning to resign from his job”
4. The teacher didn’t tell us what we had to do for homework. (note: here we can say “The teacher didn’t say what we had to do for homework.”)
The structure here is tell someone + noun clause.
Here, the NOUN CLAUSE is “what we had to do for homework”.
4. He told the children a story. (note: here we can say “He told a story to the children.”) The structure here is tell + noun
Here, the NOUN here is “a story”. We can also tell a joke, an anecdote, the truth, a lie and other things.
|