English B2, Part 2: Passive Reporting, Reported Questions & Commands, Non-Defining Relative Clauses, and Past Modals of Deduction

The first batch of English B2 lessons covered imaginary and mixed pasts, regret, and the passive across every tense.

Four more B2 lessons are live. This time: reporting what someone else said or believed — passively and directly — adding extra, non-essential detail to a sentence, and drawing confident conclusions about the past.

🆕 Four More B2 Lessons

This batch also falls into two natural pairs:

• Reporting what others said or believe — passive reporting verbs for impersonal claims and beliefs (it is said that...), and reported speech for questions and commands, where the whole shape of the sentence changes, not just the tense.
• Precision in the details — non-defining relative clauses for extra information set off by commas, and past modals of deduction for confident conclusions about things that already happened.

👉 You'll find them all on the English B2 learning path.

🗣️ Reporting What Others Said or Believe

Passive reporting (it is said that...)

Sometimes you want to report a widely held opinion or a piece of news without naming exactly who said it. English has a neat impersonal way to do this using the passive with reporting verbs like say, believe, and think.

It is said that the company is losing money. She is said to be brilliant. He is believed to have left the country.

There are two patterns: it + is/was + past participle + that..., which keeps a normal that-clause, and subject + is/was + past participle + to (have) + verb, which moves the real subject to the front and turns the claim into an infinitive. Picking the right infinitive — to be, to have been, to be -ing — depends on exactly when the reported action happened.

👉 Passive reporting covers both patterns, the full set of infinitive forms, and which reporting verbs sit comfortably in each.

Reported speech: questions & commands

Reporting a question or a command reshapes the whole sentence, not just the verb tense. A question loses its question word order and its question mark; a command loses its imperative form entirely.

"Do you like coffee?" she asked. → She asked if I liked coffee. "Sit down!" the teacher said. → The teacher told us to sit down.

Yes/no questions add if or whether; wh-questions keep the wh-word but still switch to statement word order; commands and requests become tell/ask + person + to-infinitive.

👉 Reported speech: questions & commands builds on reported statements and works through all three patterns with plenty of side-by-side examples.

🔍 Precision in the Details

Non-defining relative clauses

Some relative clauses tell you which person or thing is meant. Others just add an extra detail about someone already identified — a side comment you could lift out of the sentence without losing the main point.

My brother, who lives in Berlin, is visiting next week. Take the clause away, and my brother is visiting next week still says exactly who is visiting.

Non-defining clauses are set off by commas, never use that, and never let you drop the relative pronoun — three habits from defining clauses that quietly stop applying here.

👉 Non-defining relative clauses builds on defining relative clauses and covers the comma rule, whose/whom, and how a non-defining which can refer back to a whole idea, not just one noun.

Modals of deduction: past (must have, can't have)

You already know how to guess about the present — she must be tired. But what if the thing you're guessing about belongs to the past?

The lights were off and no one answered. They must have gone out. He says he ran a marathon in two hours. He can't have run that fast. She looked surprised — she might not have heard the news yet.

The structure is always modal + have + past participle: must have for a confident positive conclusion, can't have (or couldn't have) for a confident negative one, and might have for genuine uncertainty.

👉 Modals of deduction: past builds on modals of deduction: present and covers the full set, including deductions about actions that were in progress in the past.

🆓 Still Free, Still Open

All four lessons are free to read — no account, no login, no paywall. Each one ends with a short quick-check so you can test yourself on the spot.

📈 More Than Free Reading

These lessons are free — but GrammarMama's practice side is where the real progress happens, and that part gets personal:

• Know your level. A quick placement conversation places you on the CEFR scale (A1–C2), so practice starts exactly where you are.
• Follow a curriculum, not random exercises. Practice is steered by the same curriculum behind these articles, with a visual roadmap showing what's next and what you've already mastered.
• It remembers your mistakes — and your vocabulary. Every mistake and every new word gets scheduled for review with spaced repetition, so it resurfaces right when you're about to forget it.
• A few minutes a day, every day. Daily exercises adapt to what you need most: a new grammar point, a review of yesterday's mistakes, or vocabulary that's due.

👉 Head to Practice to find your level and start your first exercise.

⭐ Take a Look

The B2 path keeps growing.

👉 Open the English B2 learning path, start with passive reporting, and keep building your upper-intermediate English.