THE PASSIVE VOICE                                                           MENU

1. Form
2. Use
3. Practise

FORM

• A passive form is a form of the verb to be + the past participle of a verb:

Verb tense	Active voice	Passive voice
Simple present	They clean the house	The house is cleaned
Present continuous	They are cleaning the house	The house is being cleaned
Present perfect	They have cleaned the house	The house has been cleaned
Past simple	They cleaned the house	The house was cleaned
Past continuous	They were cleaning the house	The house was being cleaned
Past perfect	They had cleaned the house	The house had been cleaned
will	They will clean the house	The house will be cleaned
be going to	They are going to clean the house	The house is going to be cleaned
should, must, may, ought to, can, could...	They should clean the house	The house should be cleaned

• When we want to say who or what did the action we use the particle by:

• The radio was invented by Marconi.

• To rewrite an active sentence in the passive or the opposite take these things into account: 

• The subject in the active voice becomes the agent in the passive voice.
• The object in the active voice becomes the subject in the active voice.
• The form of the verb changes:

Madame Curie invented penicillin

Penicillin was invented by Madame Curie.

• When the active sentence has two objects we can choose either of them with no change in meaning, although it is quite normal to use the object referring to a person as the subject of  the passive sentence: 

Active voice:  The teacher gave the students some worksheets
                              The teacher gave some worksheets to the students

Passive voice: The students were given some worksheets by the teacher
                      Some worksheets were given to the students by the teacher.  

USE

We use the passive when we want to emphasize the action because it is not important who or what did the action or we don´t know who or what did it:

The window has been broken. (we don´t know who broke it or we don´t want to say it)

It is very common in textbooks and reports to describe activities, processes and also for official rules. It is also used in news reports.  



PRACTISE

• If you want to practise online, click here , here and here and here.

• Click here to get a worksheet.