Exercise 10. Retell the following jokes in indirect speech

1. A man walked into the emergency room with both of his ears badly burnt. The man explained, "The phone rang and I picked up the iron by mistake." The nurse asked, "How did you burn the other ear?" "I did that," said the man, "when I went to phone the ambulance."

2. A telephone man was trying to measure the telephone pole but couldn't figure out how to climb up the pole. He radioed the office and they suggested that he should lay the pole down on the ground and measure it. The phone man didn't like that idea. "That won't work. I need to measure how high it is, not how long." 3. Did you hear about the man who died from jumping out of an airplane? It seems he was watching the movie, forgot where he was and stepped out for some more popcorn. 4. "I have good news and bad news," the defence attorney told his client. "First, the bad news. The blood test came back, and your DNA is an exact match with that found at the crime scene." "Oh, no!" cried the client. "What's the good news?" "Your cholesterol has gone down to 140."

(From "Stupid Men's Jokes")

Exercise 11. Read the jokes and retell them in indirect speech

1. If an Englishman gets run down by a truck, he apologizes to the truck.

2. A foreign visitor to England is completely baffled by the language and struggles with the pronunciation of words such as "enough", "bough" and "though". He usually gives up altogether when he reads a local newspaper headline "Fete Pronounced Success".

3. An American tourist comes to London to stay at a top hotel. He picks up the phone one morning and asks for room service. He says, "I want three overdone fried eggs that are hard as a rock, toast that is burnt to a cinder and a cup of black coffee that tastes like mud."

"I'm sorry, sir," replies room service, "we don't serve breakfast like that." "Well, you did yesterday!"

4. An old woman from the country is visiting the big city for the first time in her life. She checks in at a smart hotel and lets the bellboy take her bags. She follows him but as the door closes, her face falls. "Young man," she says angrily. "I may be old and straight from the hills, but I ain't stupid. I paid good money and this room won't do at all. It's short of what I expected. It's too small and there's no proper ventilation. Why, there's not even a bed!"

"Ma'am," replies the bellboy, "this isn't your room. It's the elevator!"