Question

Rewrite the sentence in direct speech:
The teacher asked me whether I was going to join the medical course or the engineering course.

Answer 1

Hint:: In indirect speech, the present tense changes to past tense, along with other
necessary changes. So, in direct speech the changes made will be reversed. It will be repeated exactly as the subject said it.

Complete answer:
In grammar, there are two kinds of speech - Direct and Indirect.
In direct speech we use quotes to repeat the exact thing an individual said. However, in indirect speech, the direct quote is said in the third person, and so the quotation marks are removed. In order to change the indirect speech into direct speech, we must change the tense of the sentence, and make the necessary punctuation changes.

When we want to report something someone said without speech marks, we use indirect speech. It is also called reported speech.
When you convert a sentence from direct to indirect speech, the tense changes. So, to change the speech here, we must change it back.
From direct to indirect, the tense changes from present to past. So, we should convert the past tense of the sentence said by the teacher to the present.

So, the phrase ‘whether I was going to join’ will be changed to ‘Are you going to join’, as the past tense ‘was’ was converted to the second person question ‘are’. We know that it is a question as the person says ‘asked’, and the word ‘whether’ is mentioned.

Now, for the other changes, let us look at the given sentence:
‘The teacher asked me’ can remain the same as it is not part of the sentence actually said by the teacher. The word ‘whether’ will be scrapped as we already converted the sentence into a question. And the rest of the subject matter will remain the same, as they are only objects.

In order to punctuate direct speech, one needs to put a comma after the first verb in the sentence, followed by opening inverted commas. The end of the sentence should be punctuated according to the kind of sentence. Then the sentence should be followed by closing inverted commas.

So, the correct answer will be as follows:
The teacher asked me, “Are you going to join the medical course or the engineering course?”

Note:
Break the sentence into separate parts and try to convert each part into direct speech. Changing individual parts will make sure that you do not miss a part of the sentence.