LBCC E-ESL Online Learning

LBCC E-ESL Online Learning

Passive Voice

This lesson explains why passive voice is used and how passive voice is made. Many examples are given followed by an interactive quiz.

Active to Passive Voice

The passive voice is used instead of for five principle reasons.

1. The object is more important than the subject.
The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

2. The speaker or writer doesn’t want to mention the subject.
The window was broken last night.

3. The subject is not important.
The road was built over a toxic waste dump!

4. The subject is unknown.
El Cid was written in the 10^th century.

5. ADVANCED -- Old information needs to be presented before new information in order to better link sentences.
The new law was debated by the city council. The council then decided to get the opinions of residents of the affected neighborhood.

When converting from active to passive voice, several changes are necessary.

· The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence.

· The verb of the active sentence is converted to a form of be (am, is are, was, were, has been, will be, to be) followed by past participle of the active sentence’s verb.

Examples

Tense	Active Sentence	Passive Sentence
Simple Present	The dog bites the man. Mrs. Cahill tells Harold to fix the example.	The man is bitten by the dog. Harold is told to fix the example by Mrs. Cahill.
Present Continuous	The dog is biting the man.	The man is being bitten by the dog.
Present Perfect	The dog has bitten the man.	The man has been bitten by the dog.
Simple Past	The dog bit the man.	The man was bitten by the dog.
Past Continuous	The dog was biting the man.	The man was being bitten by the dog.
Past Perfect	The dog had bitten the man.	The man had been bitten by the dog.
Simple Future	The dog will bite the man.	The man will be bitten by the dog.
Simple Future Substitute	The dog is going to bite the man.	The man is going to be bitten by the dog.
Future Past, Repeated Past Action	The dog would bite the man every day.	The man would be bitten by the dog every day.
Past Future Substitute	The dog was going to bite the man.	The man was going to be bitten by the dog.
Present/Future Expectation/Suggestion	The dog should bite the man.	The man should be bitten by the dog.
Present/Future Expectation/Suggestion	The dog ought to bite the man.	The man ought to be bitten by the dog.
Present/Future Possibility	The dog might bite the man.	The man might be bitten by the dog.
Present/Future Possibility	The dog can bite the man.	The man can be bitten by the dog.
Present/Future Possibility	The dog could bite the man.	The man could be bitten by the dog.
Strong Present/Future Necessity	The dog must bite the man.	The man must be bitten by the dog.
Present/Future Necessity	The dog has to bite the man.	The man has to be bitten by the dog.
Past Expectation	The dog should have bitten the man.	The man should have been bitten by the dog.
Past Expectation	The dog ought to have bitten the man.	The man ought to have been bitten by the dog.
Past Possibility	The dog might have bitten the man.	The man might have been bitten by the dog.
Past Possibility	The dog must have bitten the man.	The man must have been bitten by the dog.
Past Possibility	The dog had to have bitten the man.	The man had to have been bitten by the dog.
Past Probability	The dog would have bitten the man.	The man would have been bitten by the dog.
Past Conditional	The dog will have bitten the man.	The man will have been bitten by the dog.

Fill-in-the-blank Quiz