Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate word.
I asked Nelly, "What are you looking for?"
I asked Nelly what ________ looking for.

• A. are you
• B. she was
• C. were you
• D. was she
• E. she is

Answer 1

Answer: (B)

she was

The given sentence is an interrogative sentence.

According to the rules of narration and reporting, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, the tense of the reported verb is changed into its corresponding past form. The reporting verb in the given sentence, 'said', is in the past form. Therefore, the reported verb, 'are' will change into 'was'. The first person pronoun 'I' will change to third person 'she'. In an interrogative sentence, in the indirect speech the helping verb is put after the subject.

Thus, in indirect speech the sentence must be,

I asked Nelly what she was looking for.

Thus option B is the correct answer.

Options A,C,D,E are incorrect as they do not follow the rules of Narration and Reporting.