English, baby!

Hid the truth! With passive voice!

Date: Mar 07 2008

Author: mitchelk

Lesson

Did you do something bad? Did your brother do your English homework? Did you drink the last beer?

With passive voice, you can describe actions without telling who did it.

For example, normally you would have to say, "I spilled the beer." With passive voice, you can say, "the beer was spilled."

The two sentences mean the same thing, except with passive voice you don't know who spilled the beer.

Ok, so now you know that the passive voice can be useful, but how do you make it?

First, let's review normal sentences. Normal sentences have: subject + verb + object

The subject is the person or thing that is doing something.
The verb is the action.
The object is the thing being acted on.

An example would be:

The dog bit the man.

The dog is the subject.
Bit is the verb.
The man is the object.

To make a sentence passive:

Put the object first, put the verb to be in the same tense as the normal sentence and add the past particle of the verb. And if you would like to tell who did it add by.

Object + Verb to be + past participle (by + Subject).

The man was bitten by the dog.
OR
The man was bitten.

I will give a few more examples:

Present Tense:
Active: She eats cheese. Passive: The cheese is eaten.
Active: I love him. Passive: He is loved.
Active: I stole the bike. Passive: The bike was stolen by me.

Past Tense:
Active: The fire destroyed the town. Passive: The town was destroyed.
Active: I wrote you a letter. Passive: A letter was written to you by me.
Active: I watched TV. Passive: TV was watched by me.

Now, can you guys try to make a few passive sentences in the comments. I will check back and make sure they are all correct. Give it a try!