Active and passive voice

1. Active and Passive
Voice

2. Verbs and Voice
Voice is the form a verb takes to
indicate whether the subject of the
verb performs or receives the action.
There are two types of voice: active
voice and passive voice.

3. Active Voice
Examples:
Lebron threw the basketball before the
buzzer.
Lebron shot the basketball from the
free throw line.
Lebron scored three points.
Active voice is used to show that the
subject of the sentence is performing
or causing the action. In this case is
Lebron James, a basket player

4. Passive Voice
Passive voice is used when you want to focus
on the object/action and not on the subject.
Examples:
The ball was thrown by Lebron.
The basket was shot by Lebron.
The score was made by Lebron.

5. Compare:
Lebron threw the
basketball before
the buzzer.
The ball was
thrown by Lebron.

6. When would you want to use passive
voice?
oWhen intentionally trying to hide the subject of the
sentence or when the subject is not important or
unknown.
For example, a politician might say, “The mistake was
made.” Hiding the subject helps him/her hide the
blame.
oWhen passive voice better emphasizes the main
point of the message, such as “Children were
harmed by the drunk driver.” The focus of the
sentence is the children and not the driver who
harmed them.

7. Grammar form
The passive voice will always consist of a
form of the verb "to be“ (depending on
the tense) and the past participle of
another verb.
Example:
Active: John baked the bread.
Passive: The bread was baked by John.

8. Examples:
◦ Active: Brazilians speak Portuguese. (Simple Present)
◦ Passive: Portuguese is spoken in Brazil.
(Verb to be in present)
◦ Active: The children ate the cookies. (Simple Past)
◦ Passive: The cookies were eaten by the children.
(Verb to be in past )

9. Negative form
To make a negative sentence, use
the negative form of the verb to be
according to the tense.
The computer wasn’t fixed
yesterday.
That ring isn’t made of silver.

10. Yes/No questions
Was this book written by Charles Dickens?
Yes, it was/No, it wasn’t.
Wh Questions
When was your house built?
It was built 20 years ago.
Questions
Verb to be Subject Past Participle Verb Complement
Wh word Verb to be Subject Past Participle Verb

11. Different forms of Passive
Voice.

12. Otheruses of passive voice
The Passive voice can be used to make information
sound more impersonal. This use is common in news
reports and on TV.
People believe that thousands of birds died.
The same idea can be expressed by using the
passive in two different ways:
a) Subject + passive of reporting verb + `to´ infinitive
Hundreds of thousands of birds are believed to have
died.
b) It + passive of reporting verb + that + clause
It is believed that hundreds of thousands of birds
died.