Join us again soon for more 6 Minute Grammar. There's more about this on our website at. OK, thank you very much, and there we are: the passive voice is made with an object, plus the verb to be, plus the past participle.Īnd we use it when we're more interested in the object of a verb, or if the subject is unknown or obvious. If you hit your colleagues for a non-grammatical reason, Finn, you will get into trouble. And if you hit your colleagues, Catherine? Your bike will get stolen if you don't lock it! You may hear people use the verb get instead of the verb be, like this: Now, here's a tip for using the passive voice in spoken English. William posted a photo of his birthday party on his webpage.Ī photo of William's birthday party was posted by him on his webpage.Īnd option a) sounds much better - because William is most definitely the subject of this sentence! The burglars were arrested and taken to the police station.Īnd the passive in option b) is best - we can guess that the police arrested the burglars, so we don't need to mention them. The police arrested the burglars and took them to the police station. Well, they are grammatically correct, but the active sentence a) is the best - if you agree that the name and age of the climber is more important than the name of the mountain she climbed! Mount Kilimanjaro has been climbed by an 85-year-old, Mary Hiker. Which of these news headlines sounds better: is it a):Ĩ5-year-old Mary Hiker has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. When the thing receiving the action of the verb is important, you can show this importance, by putting it at the start of the sentence, and using the verb to be plus the past participle of the verb to make a passive form.Īnd if the person or thing doing the verb is obvious, unimportant or unknown, you can leave it out. You're listening to .Īnd we're talking about active and passive voice. Here, the subject - the storm - is important, so we don't leave it out. Let's have another sentence in active voice: That's right - if you don't know who or what is doing the verb, or if it's not important, or if it's obvious, you can leave it out completely, like this: Yes - and we don't know who rescued the child, so we don't need to say by somebody. Right, in many situations, the passive sentence the child was rescued would sound more natural than somebody rescued the child - now, that's if we feel the child is more important than the rescuer. And now that Catherine has stopped hitting me, we can look at that last pair of sentences more closely. The internet is used by millions of people. First an active sentence:Īnd with the receiver of the verb at the beginning of the sentence – in the passive voice. So here's Rob with some examples of active and passive sentences. We put the receiver of the verb at the beginning of the sentence, plus the verb to be and the past participle, to make a passive sentence: Finn was hit by Catherine. Let's say it this way: Finn was hit by Catherine. But of course I'm more important than you Catherine, so I want to be at the beginning of the sentence. So, speaking grammatically, the subject – that's me – performs or does the action…Īnd the object of the verb – that’s me - receives or gets the action. And in the active voice we say Catherine hit Finn: subject - verb - object. And the reason is, we're talking about active and passive voice today. I wouldn't hit you without a good reason. I hope there's a grammatical reason for that!Īlways, Finn. And in today's programme we're talking about… Oww! You hit me! Catherine! That hurt! In this activity, students will practice both of these things, helping improve their overall understanding of the two sentence structures.Hello and welcome to 6 Minute Grammar with me, Catherine.Īnd me, Finn. For very controlled practice, you can make each. Students move around the board (without a dice) by how good their descriptions with passive voice are. chocolate in the first square and solar panels in the second. Learning to transform passive voice into active voice can be even trickier. Make a board game with one thing that can be described with passive voice in each square, e.g. Writers need to be intentional about voice in order to ensure clarity. Specifically, APA explains that voice shows relationships between the verb and the subject and/or object (see APA 7, Section 4.13). Learning to distinguish between active and passive voice is tricky. Active voice and passive voice are grammatical constructions that communicate certain information about an action. When using passive voice is appropriate.Advantages of using active voice in journalism.Make sense? Journalists should write in active voice, not passive voice. Therefore, whenever possible, it’s best to write sentences where subjects are doing things - not receiving the actions upon them. As readers, we find activity interesting, direct, and clear.
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