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Active / Passive

August 26, 2023


  1. Active or Passive? make a choice!

    2. Active or Passive

    Are the sentences written in active or passive?

    There are 10 questions ...

    On your mark, get set, go!

  2. Rewrite the passive sentences into active


  3. Rewrite the active sentences into passive


Passive Voice (Active / Passive)

August 25, 2023

  1. The passive voice is formed with:
    • the auxiliary verb to be
      • and
    • the past participle to the main verb.

  2. Passive constructions can be used in most of the tenses.
    • the tense is marked/shown by the form of of the auxiliary to be
    • the main verb stays the same in all the tenses.
    3. P.S.: A few tenses (in Sage green in the table) aren’t normally used with the passive.

     Tense  Active voice  Passive voice
     Present simple  make  is/are made
     Present continuous/prog.  is/are making  is/are being made
     Present perfect  has/have made  has/have been made
     Present perfect continuous/prog.  has been making  has been being made
     Past simple  made  was made
     Past continuous/prog.  was making  was being made
     Past perfect  had made  had been made
     Past perfect continuous/prog.  had been making  has been being made
     Going-to-Future  is/are going to make  is/are going to be made
     Will-Future  will make  will be made
     Future continuous/prog.  will be making  will be being made
     Future perfect  will have made  will have been made
     Various modal verbs, e.g. can,
     might, have to, must
     The same goes for their compounds:
     (may, could, should, etc. …)    		  can make
     might make
     has/have to make
     must make    		  can be made
     might be made
     has/have to be made
     must be     made
  3. The passive is frequently used when the person carrying out the action is unknown, unimportant or already clear from the text.
    e.g.:
    • Shoes were thrown at president Georges W. Bush.
    • Chinese is learned in some schools in Germany.
    • Shakespeare’s language is still used today.

  4. The person who does the action can be made clear with the preposition by.
    e.g.:
    • The beautiful house was built by a talented engineer.
    • After the disaster, the city’s reconstruction plan was published by the seating mayor.
    In these two examples, using the passive instead of the active puts the focus more on objects (the beautiful house, the city’s reconstruction plan) than on the people who did it.

  5. You can use the preposition will to describe what is used to do the action.
    e.g.:
    • The beautiful house must have been painted with watercolors.
    • This artwork must have been made with clay.

Practical exercise: Passive Voice (Active / Passive)

1. Active or passive:

2. Change the sentences from active to passive: