active and passive voice to understand active and passive voice it can be helpful to understand the difference between the subject of a sentence and the agent the subject of the sentence always comes before the verb subject then verb then object for example shona cleans the house the verb is cleanse we know that the subject comes before the verb therefore the subject of this sentence is shona the agent is the person or thing that performs the action we can think of the agent as the actor within a sentence can you see who or what is performing
the action in this sentence that's right shona that means that in this sentence the subject and the agent are the same when this is the case active voice is being used in passive voice this is not the case our original sentence has been rewritten here in passive voice the house is cleaned by shona we know that the subject comes before the verb the verb in this sentence is cleaned so the subject of this sentence is the house now see if you can find the agent remember the agent is the person or thing that performs the
action that's right the agent is shona in the first sentence the subject and the agent were the same in passive voice the subject and the agent are different inactive voice the subject of the sentence performs the action in passive voice the subject of the sentence receives the action when we change from active voice to passive voice the subject becomes the object and the object becomes the subject let's take a look at another example the birds ate all the seed the subject of this sentence the birds is performing the action the subject and the agent are
the same that means this sentence is active voice to change this sentence to passive voice we switch the subject and the object all the seed is placed at the beginning of the sentence it is now the subject the birds is placed at the end of the sentence in the position of the object we also need to add the word by we then use the matching form of the verb to be in combination with the past participle of the verb which in this case is was eaten all the seed was eaten by the birds we know
this sentence is written in passive voice because the subject is now receiving the action rather than performing the action in passive voice the focus shifts from the personal thing performing the action to the result of the action for this reason the agent is often left out altogether for example we could write all the seed was eaten in everyday writing and speech active voice is more common than passive voice but passive voice is important let's have a look at when passive voice is used when the performer of the action is unknown or unimportant for example the
bridge was built in the 1700s we can see the subject the bridge is receiving the action therefore this sentence is written in passive voice the sentence has no object who built the bridge is not important in this sentence or perhaps who built the bridge is not known we often use passive voice when the performer of the action is obvious here's an example toby was promoted last week toby the subject of the sentence is receiving the action who performed the action promoting him is not stated because it's obvious it was his boss we choose passive voice
when the result of the action is more important than who or what caused the action an example hundreds of people have had their homes destroyed by the storm passive voice focuses on the result of the action passive voice can be used when we want to be more polite as an example we haven't been served is more polite than you haven't served us read each of the following sentences and see if you can work out which are written in active voice and which are written in passive voice pause here while you work here is the subject
in each sentence here is the agent or actor in each sentence in these sentences the subject and the agent are the same this means they are active voice these sentences are passive voice now rewrite each sentence changing those inactive voice to passive voice and vice versa pause while you work the first the manager serve the customer the second mark's phone was stolen because the agent is unknown it's best to leave out the by someone but you could include it the third dinner is being cooked by julie the fourth she has seen the movie three times
and the last one the winner was announced write one sentence in active voice and one sentence in passive voice and leave them in the comments below if you're stuck for ideas use this to help easyteaching.net
