Passive voice and active voice

Let’s face it – grammar can be head wrecking! Anyone who tells you that all grammar is easy to learn and understand has probably never tried learning another language and, to be honest, is probably a native English speaker! It really get’s my goat when I’m on holidays and I hear a native English speaker talking to locals as if they are stupid because their English is not very good. Sound familiar?

One area of English grammar that can be quite tricky is the passive voice. On the plus side, the passive voice is generally used in writing which means you have more time to think about what you want to write. When speaking English it is not very common to use the passive voice, as it can sound too formal. However, there are some instances where it’s better or necessary to use the passive voice in spoken English. A good knowledge of the passive voice will also improve your reading skills. So learning to use the passive voice is important if you want your English to improve!

If you intend to do an exam such as the Cambridge FCE, CAE or IELTS then it’s even more important to have a good understanding of the form and use of the passive voice. The passive voice is also used a lot in academic English and sometimes in business English. But before we look at the passive voice, it’s important that we understand the active voice. Let’s get started!

If you speak any English at all then you are familiar with the active voice! Why? Because a great deal of what we say in English (and other European languages) is in the active voice. Here are some examples:

I watch Netflix every night.

Sue cooks dinner at 6 o’clock.

Kate kissed Peter.

The car hit the wall.

The dog ate the meat.

All of these simple sentences have three things in common. They all contain:

1. A person or thing who does an action (subject)
2. An action verb (verb)
3. A person or thing that receives the action (object)

Let’s take a closer look at one of the sentences:

Kate kissed Peter.

In this sentence:

Kate does the action. Kate is the subject.

Kissed is the action. Kissed is the verb.

Peter receives the action. Peter is the object.

As we can see in this example, the subject of a sentence in the active voice does the action.

The subject of a sentence in the passive voice receives the action.

Let’s look at some of the examples we used for the active voice.

Remember the sentence:

Kate kissed Peter

In this sentence Kate is the subject, kissed is the verb and Peter is the object.

If we put Peter at the beginning of the sentence then he becomes the subject.

Now we must change the verb from the active voice to the passive voice.

How do we do this?

We form the passive voice using the verb to be + past participle of the main verb.

The verb to be indicates the tense. The main verb in the passive voice is always in the past participle. So the active sentence:

Kate kissed Peter

changes to the passive sentence:

Peter was kissed by Kate.

In this sentence Peter is now the subject. Peter does not do the action. Peter receives the action.

In the active sentence the verb is in the past simple – kissed. In the passive sentence we must also use the past simple so it has the same meaning as the active sentence. We do this by using the past simple of the verb to be  (was) together with the past participle or third form of the main verb kiss (kiss, kissed, kissed).

Remember this:

In the passive voice the verb to be tells us the tense (present/past/future).

The main verb is always in the past participle or third form.

The phrase by Kate tells us that Kate did the action. In a passive voice sentence we use the preposition by to indicate who or what does the action.

Let’s look at another example:

Sue cooks dinner every night.

In this sentence Sue is the subject, cooks is the verb and dinner is the object.

Let’s change this sentence to the passive voice:

Dinner is cooked by Sue every night.

Now dinner is the subject. The word is tells us the tense – present simple. The main verb cook changes to the past participle cooked.

Let’s look at one more example. This time I want you to think about how to change the sentence from the active voice to the passive voice. Let’s use this example:

The boy ate the cake.

What’s the subject of this sentence?

The boy.

What’s the object?

The cake.

What tense is the verb ate in?

The past simple.

Ok, now let’s make a new sentence in the passive voice.

What’s the new subject?

The cake.

How do we change the past simple verb ate to the passive voice?

Remember we form the passive with to be + past participle!

So in this case, we use the past simple of to be and the past participle of the verb to eat.

Got it? That’s right – was eaten.

Now we have the construction:

The cake was eaten.

But what about the boy? What do we add to this sentence to tell us that the boy did the action?

That’s right – by the boy.

So our new sentence in the passive voice is:

The cake was eaten by the boy.

We can make sentences in the passive voice with almost any tense. The table below illustrates how we do this.

*not used as it sounds unnatural

As we can see from the table above, the only part of a sentence that changes when we change the tense of a passive sentence is the form of the verb to be.

So now we know how to form the passive voice. Do we? I hope so!

But I hear you asking….when do we use the passive voice?

As I mentioned at the beginning of the blog, the passive voice is used more in formal writing than in spoken English. However, there are some instances of when we use the passive voice in everyday spoken English. There are four main reasons for using the passive voice, whether in written of spoken English. These are:

1. When it’s obvious who does the action.
2. When it’s not important who does the action.
3. When we don’t know who does the action.
4. When we don’t want to say who does the action.

For more information on this, check out this blog post on the passive voice, written by my colleague John!