Conversation about Reported Speech

Putra : Hi, Putri how are you today?

Putri  : Hello Putra. Just fine, thanks J

Putra : Putri, have you seen a suggestion box in front of the headmaster’s office ?

Putri  : Yes. What’s that for, actually ?

Putra : We can write a suggestion for our headmaster, you know, to improve our school,

            and put the suggestion in that box.

Putri  : That’s great! Actually I wanted to give some suggestions to him but don’t know how      to do it.

Putra : Did you? What’s that about?

Putri  : You know… our school facilities arevery poor. I would suggest that the school

            improve the facilities.

Putra : What facilities do you mean?

Putri  : It’s about computers. We don’t have enough computers. You see… there are

            hundreds of students in this school, but there are only ten computers we have.

            And they are very old, too.

Putra : Yes, that’s right. So, the first suggestion is add more computers and replace  the

           old computers with the new ones.

Putri  : Yes. Absolutely

Putra : OK. We have got some ideas. Let’s write them down.

Quoted Speech and Reported Speech

Direct Speech / Quoted Speech

Saying exactly what someone has said is called direct speech (sometimes called quoted speech)
Here what a person says appears within quotation marks ("...") and should be word for word.

For example:

She said, "Today's lesson is on presentations."
or
"Today's lesson is on presentations," she said.

Indirect Speech / Reported Speech

Indirect speech (sometimes called reported speech), doesn't use quotation marks to enclose what the person said and it doesn't have to be word for word.
When reporting speech the tense usually changes. This is because when we use reported speech, we are usually talking about a time in the past (because obviously the person who spoke originally spoke in the past). The verbs therefore usually have to be in the past too. 

For example: 

Direct speech	Indirect speech
"I'm going to the cinema", he said.	He said he was going to the cinema.

Sumber :  http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/reportedspeech.htm