Passive Voice 1. Purposes of Passive Voice 2. Structure of Passive Voice Verbs 3. Passive Voice in Tenses 4. Exercises
1. Purposes of Passive Voice 1. When the doer of an action is not known not important too obvious. 2. The object (recipient) of the action is more important than the doer.
1.1 When the doer is not known/relevant Example: The window has been broken. Who has broken it? In this case, we do not know who broke the window. We may want to keep it secret or maybe it is not relevant. Instead of starting the sentence with ‘somebody’, ie, ‘Somebody has broken the window.’, we start the sentence with the object: the window.
1.2 When the object of the action is the emphasis Example: The killer was sentenced a life’s imprisonment. In this case, we do not care about who made the judgment Instead, our emphasis is put on the murderous killer. So, we start the sentence with ‘the killer’ in order to stand out our focus concerned.
2. Structure of Passive Voice Verbs Syntactic Structure Active ----------------------- Passive e.g. eats ----------------------- is eaten i.e. verb ----------------------- be+p.p. To explain, in a passive verb phrase, the structure is ‘be+p.p.’, in which, ‘be’ is changed according to
3. Passive Voice in Tenses 3.1 Present Tenses By using the verb ‘eat’, Tenses Active Present - Simple -eats - continuous -is eating - perfect -has eaten - perfect continuous -has been eating
Passive -is eaten -is being eaten -has been eaten -has been being eaten
Note: In passive verb phrases, the last word is always in p.p. form.
3. Passive Voice in Tenses 3.2 Past Tenses By using the verb ‘eat’, Tenses Past - Simple - continuous - perfect - perfect continuous
Active Passive -ate -was eating -had eaten -had been eating
-was eaten -was being eaten -had been eaten -had been being eaten
3. Passive Voice in Tenses 3.3 Future Tense By using the verb ‘eat’, Tense Active Passive Future - Simple -will eat - continuous -will be eating - perfect -will have eaten - perfect continuous-will have been eating
-will be eaten -will be being eaten -will have been eaten -NIL
4. Exercises Example: People speak Emglish in many countries Compare: English is spoken in many countries. Somebody/They pulled down the building last week. Compare: The old building was pulled down (by then/somebody)last week. We will hold a meeting tomorrow. Compare: A meeting will be held tomorrow (by us). * ( ) means optional.
Exercise 1. Somebody cleans our classroom everyday. 2. Japan exported millions of cars last year. 3. Mr. Chan will feed his dog on canned food.
Our classroom is cleaned everyday Millions of cars were exported from Japan last year. Mr. Chan’s dog will be fed on canned food.