Passive Voice

In order to understand what passive voice is, we have to first understand what active voice is.

In active voice statements we find that a subject performing something, look at the following examples:

 

• The kids play in the backyard.

• Susana is watching tv in the living-room.

• Marc studied music in his hometown.

• The students will take a test next week.

• Mr. Jones has seen that movie three times

In all the examples above we can see that the subject is the one that performs that action of the verb. This can also be done by asking the question “who…?” to the verb. When the someone performs the action of the verb, we say then that our statement is active.

 

• Brenda goes to school by bus. (Who goes to school by bus? Brenda)

In the passive voice the subject does not perform the action of the verb. Look at the following example.

•  The lab is painted two times a year.

If we ask the question “who…” in order to find who performs, the action of the verb we will not find and answer to this question

•  Spanish is spoken at this office. (Who speaks Spanish at tis office? There is no answer)

 

No let’s take a look at the structure of both the active and the passive voice.

 

Active Voice:

Subject/Pronoun + Auxiliary* + Verb + complement

 

Passive Voice:

Subject/Pronoun +Auxiliary * + be + Participle + complement + agent/doer

*Simple present and simple past have no auxiliary in their affirmative structure. This is very important to remember when we will make the change from active voice to the passive voice.

For a sentence to be changed to the passive voice, its verb needs to perform something. We can call it the action of the verb or the direct object. This can be done by either asking the questions “what or who” to the main verb of the sentence. If any of these two questions can’t be answers then the sentence cannot be change to the passive form.

e.g.:

 

The kids are playing cheerfully in the backyard. (What are the kids playing?)

 

This sentence can’t be changed to the passive because the verb does not perform anything.

The kids are playing baseball cheerfully in the park. (What are the kids playing?)

This sentence can be changed to the passive voice because the verb performs an action (it has an object). 

When we make the change from active to passive the action of the verb will become the subject of the passive voice.

The structure of the sentence has to be kept. This means that no changes in verb tense will be made.

In the example above both sentences are in the present progressive form. 

As you can see all the elements in the active voice are included in the passive voice, the only element that we include is the verb to be. This will take the form of the verb in the active form.

In the example above the verb to be adds -ing because that the form of the main verb in the active form.

Now let take a look at other examples.

Simple Present:

In the above sentence (simple present) we have no auxiliary in the affirmative form. In this sentence the doer can be omitted since it is not necessary. The important fact is that Spanish is studied, not who performs the action.

 

Spanish is studied at a language school .

The same happens for the simple past tense. Look at the following example:

Here you have a list of passive forms of most common structures.