A doubt about " spot the mistake" 's exercise
Hi,
I have completed a " spot the mistake" exercise on my CAE textbook, but i have a doubt about a sentence.

The sentence is : " Our teacher said we were all deserving a great deal of praise for our exam results".

Now the mistake is obviuosly the continuous form " were...deserving" and I corrected it in " we all deserved", but in the " teacher book" i found it corrected " we all deserve" in present simple form.

My doubt is this. If there is an introductory sentence in past simple " our teacher said" it wouldn't be correct to put the rest of the sententence with a past tense, since this is a case of "reported speech"?

Question

A doubt about " spot the mistake" 's exercise
Hi,
I have completed a  " spot the mistake" exercise on my CAE textbook, but i have a doubt about a sentence.

The sentence is : " Our teacher said we were all deserving a great deal of praise for our exam results".

Now the mistake is obviuosly the continuous form " were...deserving" and I corrected it in " we all deserved", but  in the " teacher book" i found it corrected " we all deserve" in present simple form.

My doubt is this. If  there is an introductory sentence in  past simple " our teacher said"  it wouldn't be correct to put the rest of the sententence with a past tense, since this is a case of "reported speech"?

Answer

The others have said: backshifting is optional here.

Unless there is some other reason (it depends on the module of the book and what it was trying to teach/explain) the teacher's book should have had both options as correct.

Answer

There is no need to put the verb into past simple form if the original sentence is about something that is still true. If students have deserved a great deal of praise for something that they have done, it doesn't change in the future for that specific task, situation etc.

Answer

I would say your answer was as correct as the one in "teacher's book".

The teacher might have been thinking "You guys have done so well on this one.  You deserve a praise".
Or it might have been "You guys are so good now judging from the exam results.  You deserve a praise".

With the former case, "deserved" should be more appropriate, while the latter calls for "deserve".
No one can be sure what the teacher was emphasizing, so both answers should be equally good.

Answer

The truth is backshifting is optional if the situation is still true —   it is often clearer *not* to use backshifting if the situation is still true. I usually don't teach that to my students, because it is so obvious that they naturally do it — as you have.  A 30-second search will verify this. For example:

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/reported-speech-backshift.htm