The Passive Voice

THE PASSIVE VOICE

1. What is the Passive Voice?2. When do we use the Passive Voice? 3. How can we easily change the Active to the Passive Voice?

COMPARE:

WHICH SENTENCE IS PASSIVE?

1. THIS BOTTLE OF MILK HAS ALREADY BEEN OPENED

2. She has laughed at the joke .

Passive is the opposite of active Active: Everybody loves music. Passive: Music is loved (by everybody). Active: The policeman arrested the thief. PASSIVE: The thief was arrested (by the policeman). Active: The mechanic is fixing my car. PASSIVE: My car is being fixed (by the mechanic).

1. What is the Passive Voice?

GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE:

TO BUILD THE PASSIVE WE NEED:

TO BE + PAST PARTICIPLE OF THE MAIN VERB (3rd column) Ex: to work, worked, worked to know, knew, known

A TRANSITIVE VERB - VERB WHICH ALWAYS HAS AN OBJECT.

Subject + verb + object

LIST OF TENSES:

am / is / are + Past participle - Present Simple Passive AM / IS / ARE being + PAST PARTICIPLE - PRESENT continuous PASSIVE was /Were + Past participle - Past Simple Passive has / have been + Past participle - Present Perfect Passive was /Were being + Past participle - Past Continuous Passive had been + Past participle - Past Perfect Passive will be + past participle - Future Passive

Note: Passive verbs have the same tenses as active verbs.

2 - WHEN DO WE USE THE PASSIVE?

1. When the ation is more important or interesting than the person who performs the action. Ex: £ 1.000.000 were donated to the children's hospital.

2. When the person who does the action is not know, or important. Ex: This building was built in the 19th century.

3. When the person doing the action is obvious. Ex: The thief was arrested yesterday.

4. When the object cannot do the action itself. Ex: 100 chocolate cakes were sold last weekend.

If we want to say WHO does the action, we use

bY + PERSON

AN AGENT

(optional, not necessary)

Ex: £ 1.000.000 were donated to the children's hospital (by the Government)

Ex: The thief was arrested yesterday (by the police)

3. Transforming Active to Passive

Active: Apple sells thousands of IPhones every day. Passive: Thousands of IPhones are sold every day (by Apple).

subject verb direct object

Subject Verb by agent

The 6 steps to change an Active sentence to Passive.

Step 1: identify the subject, object and verb. Step 2: move the object to the front of the sentence. Step 3: identify the tense of the main verb. Step 4: conjugate the verb BE so it's the same tense as the VERB in the active sentence. Step 5: add the past participle of the MAIN verb after BE. Step 6: add 'by' if you want or need to.