The Passive Voice
The passive changes the camera angle of a sentence: it makes the affected person or thing the subject. Learn to build it across tenses and decide when it improves the message.
About 23 minutes · Guided practice · 10-question mastery test
Understand · You say · Check
A clear route through the lesson
Make the affected person or thing the subject when that is the useful focus. Add the agent only when the reader needs it. The compact extra forms below prepare you for the full quiz.
Read the explanations, answer aloud at each You say pause, then reveal the model and check one point. A model is one possible answer. Finish with the 10-question understanding check.
Keep the learner’s speaking time. At each You say pause, use the suggested follow-up and one correction focus. Finish with the 10-question understanding check.
By the end of this lesson, you can…
The essential rules
Form: be + past participle
Keep the tense in be; the main verb becomes a past participle. The object of the active sentence becomes the subject.
They deliver parcels. → Parcels are delivered.Choose the focus
Use passive voice when the doer is unknown, obvious, unimportant, or less important than the action or result.
My bike was stolen. · The results will be announced Friday.Add the agent only if useful
Use by when the agent is new, surprising or important. Do not automatically include it.
The novel was written by Toni Morrison. · The road was repaired.Two useful forms to add
Continuous passive: They were preparing dinner → Dinner was being prepared. Use am/is/are being now, and was/were being in the past.
Passive reporting: People say the bridge is safe → It is said that the bridge is safe, or The bridge is said to be safe. These report a claim; they do not prove it.
Choose the focus: “The volunteers repaired the hall” highlights who did the work. “The hall was repaired by volunteers” keeps the hall as the topic. Neither is automatically better.
See the pattern
| Tense/form | Active | Passive |
|---|---|---|
| Present simple | They clean the rooms. | The rooms are cleaned. |
| Past simple | They built the bridge. | The bridge was built. |
| Present perfect | They have sent the email. | The email has been sent. |
| Modal | They must finish it. | It must be finished. |
Three mistakes to avoid
Guided practice
Try each item before opening the answer.
1. Change to passive: People speak English in many countries.
English is spoken in many countries.
2. Change to passive: Someone stole my phone last night.
My phone was stolen last night. The unknown agent is omitted.
3. Change to passive: They will publish the results tomorrow.
The results will be published tomorrow.
4. Is passive better? “Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.”
Usually keep the active because the famous agent is important. Passive is possible if Hamlet is already the topic.
Final check
Check your understanding
Choose one answer for each question. Read the context carefully: a question may ask for a particular form, meaning or register. The explanations show why that answer fits.
0 of 10 questions answered