He said to me, "What time do the offices close?"

Solution (By Examveda Team)

Voice in Grammar:
Voice refers to the relationship between a verb and its subject. There are two main voices: active and passive. In the active voice, the subject performs the action (e.g., "The dog chased the ball"). In the passive voice, the subject receives the action (e.g., "The ball was chased by the dog"). This question focuses on reported speech, which often involves a shift in voice and tense.

Reported Speech:
Reported speech is when we tell someone what another person said. It often requires changes to the tense of the verb and pronouns to reflect the change in speaker and time.

Correct Answer: Option C: He asked me what time the offices closed.
This option correctly reports the direct speech ("What time do the offices close?") while using the appropriate grammatical structure for indirect speech. The tense of the verb "close" changes from present simple ("do close") to past simple ("closed") to reflect the shift from the original speaker's perspective to the reported speech perspective. The question word "what time" remains unchanged.

Why other options are incorrect:
Option A: He wanted to know what time the offices close.
While grammatically correct, this option doesn't directly report the question. It paraphrases the speaker's intent but lacks the directness of a reported question.

Option B: He asked me what time did the offices close.
This is grammatically incorrect. In reported speech, the word order should follow the structure of a statement, not a question. The correct word order would be "He asked me what time the offices closed."

Option D: He asked me what time the offices did close.
Similar to option B, this option uses incorrect word order for reported speech. The auxiliary verb "did" is unnecessary and creates an ungrammatical sentence.