Active and passive

Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to look at active and passive voice in English. This is a very important grammatical structure in English. We use it for different reasons, such as changing the focus of the sentence. Let’s look at some examples…

Here’s a simple example: “The cat ATE the mouse”, active, “The mouse WAS EATEN by the cat”, passive. The passive form is really useful if we want to change the focus of the sentence. In this case, we want to focus on the mouse and not the cat.

So how do we make the passive? It’s quite easy. Just use the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ and add the past participle form of the main verb. What’s the past participle? In this case, the present is EAT, the past is ATE, and the past participle is EATEN. EAT, ATE, EATEN. “The cat ATE the mouse”, “The mouse WAS EATEN (by the cat)”.

There are different reasons why we use the passive voice in English. Sometimes we don’t know who did the action, like in a crime. So we could say “My car WAS STOLEN”. We don’t know who stole my car, so passive is really useful here. Note that it’s not necessary to say “My car WAS STOLEN (by a thief)”. That’s obvious, right? This is another reason why passive voice is so useful in English.

Here’s another good example. “English IS SPOKEN all around the world”. This is good for talking about people in general. It sounds much better than “People speak English all around the world”. Again, obviously we’re talking about people.

You might also see a sign in a hotel or a shop that says: “English IS SPOKEN here”. It sounds more formal than saying “We speak English here” or “Everyone speaks English here”. So passive can be more formal or less direct as well.

OK, that’s a very brief overview of active and passive in English. It’s good to keep it simple. Can you think of any good examples using the passive voice in a natural way? Go to ANGLOPOD.COM and write them in the comments. See you soon!

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