PASSIVE VOICE:  Introduction Part 1

Introduction

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In today's lesson we begin our unit on PASSIVE VOICE.  We begin with two questions:
What is passive voice?  When can an active voice sentence be restructured as a passive voice sentence? 

Sneak Preview

 

     In my high school writing classes, I wasn't taught thow to organize an essay or to develop my ideas more in depth.  We students were asked just to give the basic idea, and that was about it.  Now I've learned how to write more and to provide more details in our writing.
     Also, in high school we were allowed to write in Chinese, and to then translate into English.  But now writing is much easier because I've learned that I shouldn't translate from Chinese into English.  Instead, I just write down what I want to tell the readers in English!

What Is Passive Voice?

 

Every sentence is either an active voice or a passive voice sentence. By far, the most common type of sentence is active voice.  However, passive voice is also very common in the English language, and in English writing in particular, and it is essential to write and use such a sentence correctly. Understanding passive voice is also an important part of reading comprehension.

  • ACTIVE: The teachers allowed us to write in Chinese and translate into English.

  • PASSIVE: We were allowed to write in Chinese and then translate into English.

Look at the two sentences above.  Although it does not seem so at first, both sentences above communicate the same idea and are in the same time reference and verb tense.  Both sentences are simple past tense.

What differences do you see between the ACTIVE voice sentence and the PASSIVE voice sentence?  Consider the following:

  1. word order

  2. verb form

  3. nouns and pronouns that are present in one sentence but absent in the other

  4. information communicated

ACTIVE VOICE

This active voice sentence has a pattern of S-V (subject-verb), since the main verb in this sentence is intransitive (i.e. it does not take an object):

1. My brother returned home.

This active voice sentence has a pattern of S-V-DO (subject-verb-direct object), since the main verb in this sentence is transitive (i.e. it requires a direct object) and has the noun luggage as the direct object.

2. The customs officials searched my luggage.

Of the two active voice sentences above, only the second one (S-V-DO) can become  a passive voice sentence.

Let's transform that sentence into a passive voice sentence now:

PASSIVE VOICE

in depth

3a. My luggage was searched by the customs officials.

3b. My luggage was searched.

For the two passive voice sentences directly above, notice -
 
1. a different sentence structure. My luggage, which is the (direct) object of the main (and transitive) verb searched in active voice sentence #2, is the subject of both passive voice sentences.
2.  a different verb structure. Sentences #2 and #3 are both the same verb tense (simple present tense), but the verb forms are different.
   
For passive voice sentence 3a, notice -
 
3. the agent of the action is indicated in a prepositional phrase that begins with "by...". We are told who searched the luggage in the prepositional phrase, "by the customs officials".
 
For passive voice sentence 3b, notice -
 
4. the absense of a stated agent. We are not told who searched the luggage.

Next... Warm-up Exercises


Continue with us as we do some warm-up exercises.

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