how to use reporting verbs with 'that' clauses [closed]

Solution 1:

That's a worthwhile project. An interesting reporting verb that is used for utterances that are not sentences is "go": "He went [makes rude noise]." Of course, there is no "that", which only goes with sentences in indirect discourse. A friend, Paul Kay, noticed that his children had started using "go" where "say" is used in standard English.

Solution 2:

In terms of tensed clauses, content clauses beginning with the subordinator that are always declarative. Most of the verbs in that list that don't freely take content clause with that most commonly take interrogative clauses as complements instead of declarative ones.

The verbs describe, examine and discuss don't readily take content clauses using the subordinator that. All three can take freely interrogative clauses starting with a wh- word.

Interrogative content clauses

• I shall describe what happened.
• Let's examine who the culprit might be.
• Let's discuss what we're going to do.

However, the verbs describe and discuss can take declarative content clauses using the specialised subordinator how. This subordinator is often used with verbs that take interrogative content clauses to enable them to take declarative ones:

Declarative content clauses with how

• So I described to the Police how Bertha had come in and beaten everyone up.
• So then we discussed how London was such a rubbish place to live and how Berlin was even worse but Barcelona was fantastic.

Notice that in these two sentences the speaker doesn't mean the method that Bertha had used or that we discussed the question In which ways is London a rubbish place to live. The speaker probably really just wants to say that they talked about the fact that London was a rubbish place to live.

There are times when it can be ambiguous as whether a speaker is using an interrogative content clause or a declarative one:

• Describe how you escaped from Colditz.

Note

The Original Poster - and anyone else who's interested - might find this question about the verb describe worth a look.