Passive Voice
Narrate & Describe
Objectives
Recognize the use of passive voice
Change active to passive voice in controlled contexts
Use passive voice to add formality
What is Passive Voice?
A verb is a word that expresses an action, state, or occurrence. Often when we use a verb, we are expressing the action connected to the subject. The subject is the noun that is the doer of the verb. This is what we call active voice.
- Active Voice
- The subject acts upon the verb. The verb is done by the subject.
- Example: Alice sings the song. (Alice is performing this action.)
However, in more formal speaking, we often use the passive voice. The passive expresses the action connected to the object. The object noun moves to before the verb and the verb structure changes. This changes the focus from who did the verb to the object that was "verbed."
- Passive Voice
- The object receives the verb. The focus is on the object which is verbed.
- Example: The song was sung by Alice.
Think of this change of voice like moving the camera from the actor to the receiver of the verb.
Example:
I threw the snowball.
He was hit by the snowball.
I aimed the snowball at my boyfriend.
The snowball was aimed at my boyfriend.
The Structure
To change a verb from active to passive, you need to be sure that the verb has an object (transitive verbs). If there is only an actor with no receiver of the verb, it cannot become a passive sentence.
We live in Russia. (Live does not have an object. It cannot be passive.)
We speak Russian. (Speak has the language as an object. This can be passive.)
If there is an object for the verb, you can change the focus from the actor to the receiver.
Russian is spoken.
This is how you make a passive sentence:
SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT
changes to
OBJECT + BE VERB + PAST PARTICIPLE (+ BY SUBJECT)
Look at the table to see more examples of passive voice.
Present Tense Verbs | ||
|---|---|---|
The bird | eats | the seeds. |
The seeds | are eaten | by the bird. |
The man | is walking | the dog. |
The dog | is being walked | by the man. |
The coworkers | have signed | the card. |
The card | has been signed | by the coworkers. |
Present Tense Verbs | ||
|---|---|---|
The bird | ate | the seeds. |
The seeds | were eaten | by the bird. |
The man | was walking | the dog. |
The dog | was being walked | by the man. |
The coworkers | had signed | the card. |
The card | had been signed | by the coworkers. |
Notice that the tense and aspect stays the same when the verb changes from active to passive, but the be verb shows the aspect. The main verb is always in the past participle. The subject and objects switch places.
One more note on the structure: Passive voice does not always include the by subject phrase. If it is not relevant to what the speaker is saying or is obvious, they may not include it.
The cake was baked (by the baker) this morning.
This is obvious and is unlikely to be included.
Why Use Passive Voice?
There are a few reasons why we use the passive voice in our speaking.
When we don't know the actor or don't want to point fingers
The computer was stolen this morning.
The garbage wasn't taken outside this morning.
When the action and the object are important and the doer is distracting or unimportant
My temperature will be taken first.
The textbook was written a long time ago.
In science or teamwork when the result should be the focus
The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781.
The product has been designed to solve a specific problem.
Changing the focus by using either active or passive voice shows control over the language. This grammar form allows you to focus on what you think is most important.
As we have mentioned many times, it would be very unusual to speak only in the passive voice. You will see it mixed in with other forms of verbs.
Exercise 1: Listen for Passive
Watch this video and listen for examples of passive voice. This is also a great example of how different tenses and aspects are used together to create an interesting narrative.
(0:37) I mean, scientists are literally counting sheep, the cliché of how to fall asleep, when they are roused into a new and dramatic sort of consciousness by an otherworldly artwork.
(1:01) The metal structure has been removed" Utah official said on Saturday.
(1:31) And outside of Wendover, Utah, you can find Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, which, like a lot of my favorite art, cannot really be described or photographed effectively.
(2:33) But there is a big problem with that theory, which is that satellite photographs tell us that the obelisk was installed sometime in 2016, and McCracken died in 2011.
Exercise 2: Listen for Passive
Watch this video and listen for examples of passive voice. There is not a transcript for this video and she speaks quickly. You may need to listen to it more than once.
Answer Key
(0:18) More than 20 years after Gustav Klint's famous Portrait of a Lady was reportedly stolen, a gardener has found it hidden behind the walls of the very museum that it was taken from.
(0:58) The prosecutors say the painting is one of Klint's most famous pieces, stolen from a gallery in northern Italy more than 20 years ago, and it was discovered here.
(1:12) Behind it lay the masterpiece hidden in a plastic bag in the external wall of the very same gallery it was stolen from.
(1:46) Thirteen masterpieces were stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston and are yet to be recovered.
(1:52) In 2016, the iconic soup can prints by Andy Warhol were lifted from the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri, still no luck on its whereabouts.
(2:02) The mystery of this heist may have been solved, but there are still so many questions.
Exercise 3: Active or Passive
Write 5 sentences that can be made passive (transitive verbs like tell = can have an object).
Ex. The professor tells stories to explain the main idea.
Write 5 sentences that cannot be made passive (intransitive verbs like laugh = cannot have an object).
Ex. The class laughed when I make a joke.
Mix the sentences in a random order.
Your teacher will put you in a breakout room with a partner. Read your sentences to a partner.
Your partner will say active for sentences that can only be in active voice or passive for sentences that can be in passive voice.
You and your partner will change the sentences into passive voice.
Ex. The stories are told (by the professor) to explain the main idea.
Repeat the activity with your partner's list of sentences.
Be prepared to share your passive sentences with the class.
Exercise 4: Great Inventions & Discoveries
Your teacher will assign you to a group to work with and tell you how much time you have for this activity.
As a group, choose a famous invention or discovery.
Prepare a short explanation of your choice using a combination of active and passive voice and different aspects of the past. Include some present sentences to explain the impact of that invention/discovery on the world now.
Make sure everyone in the group has the prepared explanation.
Your teacher will then put one person from each group into a new group.
Share the explanation your first group prepared with the new group.
Exercise 5: Class Recipe Book
This activity is continued from the lesson Narrate & Describe: Simple Present
As a class, you will rewrite the recipe steps from your cookbook as passive sentences.
Pay careful attention to verbs that cannot be made passive, those ones should remain in active voice.