PASSIVE VOICE | Learn How To Change From Active to Passive Voice in English Grammar

Hello, everyone. This is Mike from Shaw English. 

In today's basic English video,

I’m going  to be teaching you about the active and passive voice in English.

Now many of  you know how to use the active voice,

but you might have a tough time switching over using the passive voice.

It's okay. No worries. 

By the end of today's video, you're  going to understand it all very well. 

Make sure you keep watching  until the end of the video 

because there will be a quiz and some homework. 

You ready? Let's go. 

So before we can start switching our  sentences from active to passive, 

it's very important for us to understand  the different parts of a sentence. 

Let's look at our board.

We have a sentence written, ‘The boy opened the door.’

This is an example of an active sentence

which usually follows the pattern of subject verb object.

Our subject the ‘doer’ is ‘the boy’. But what did the boy do? 

‘The boy opened…’ ‘open’ is the example of an action. 

What did the boy open? The boy opened the door. 

‘the door’ is the receiver or the direct object. 

So again, before we can really switch  our sentences from active to the passive, 

it's very important for us to understand  the different parts of a sentence. 

And the more that we understand  different parts of a sentence, 

the easier it will be to switching  active sentences to passive sentences. 

So now let's switch our active  sentence over to a passive one. 

Here's our sentence from before: ‘The boy opened the door.’ 

Now, we have, ‘The door was opened by the boy.’

Like I mentioned earlier, for active sentences, they follow the subject verb object pattern. 

Well it's a little bit different  from the passive sentence. 

Before we had the receiver  at the end of the sentence, 

now we have the receiver in  the beginning of the sentence. 

‘The door was opened…’ Wow. Our verb is the same. 

Or the action is the same. But we have a ‘to be’ verb added on. 

‘was opened’ is our ‘to be’ verb  plus the past participle of ‘open’. 

Now, it could also be these ‘to be’ verbs as well.

But, we're going to use ‘was’.

And this will change depending on the  tense that we're using in our sentence. 

We also have ‘the door being opened by the boy’.

Now, the reason why we have it in brackets is because

sometimes we don't need to know who is the ‘doer’.

In this sense, the boy is the ‘doer’. And this ‘by’ helps us understand that  

it is the boy who is opening the door.

Let's look at some more examples.

Okay, so now we have examples of active sentences  that we're going to change to passive sentences.  

Let's look at our first one.

‘The woman helped the man.’

We learned earlier that whenever we're  changing active sentences to passive sentences, 

we are going to need to switch  our doer and our receiver. 

In this one, the doer, who is the woman, is  going to switch places with the receiver,  

who is the man, because now the man is  the focus of the sentence and will now  

come to the front - the man.

But what's our action?

Well in our sentence before,  our action is ‘helped’. 

We're going to now change this  to the past participle which,  

luckily for us the past participle,  is ‘helped’.

Now, we're going to add our ‘to be’ verb which is ‘was’.

So the man was helped. By whom?

The woman.

Which is now at the end of the sentence.

‘The man was helped by the woman.’

Let's look at our next one.

‘The cat bit the girl.’

Just like we learned before, we're going to switch our doer and our receiver.

So now the girl is in the front of the sentence.

‘The girl… bit…’ The past participle of bit? 

This one's a little bit different.

‘bit’ is going to change to ‘bitten’

When we add our ‘to be’ verb ‘was’,

‘The girl was bitten...'

By what?

The cat.

‘The girl was bitten by the cat.’

‘The knife cut the bread.’ 

‘The bread was cut by the knife.’

I think we're getting this.

‘The student answered the question.’

‘The question was answered by the student.’

In our last one, ‘The teacher taught the class.’ 

‘The class was taught by the teacher.’

Wow. I think we're getting better.

Let's move on.

So earlier we changed some sentences from the active to the passive voice.

Well now, let's practice recognizing sentences in the active and passive voice.

Our first one, ‘The bat hit the ball.’

hmm,

well, I can see that the doer of my action

is the ‘bat’.

What did the bat do?

The action is ‘hit’. ‘The bat hit…’ 

What's the receiver?

‘the ball’

‘The bat hit the ball.’

Oh, this is definitely

a sentence written in the active voice. 

‘The food was cooked by the man.’

Now, there are some big clues in this sentence.

‘…by the man.’ Oh, yeah. 

That's a clue.

Also, ‘was cooked’.

Well here's our past participle  and our ‘to be’ verb. 

This sentence, for sure, is a  sentence written in the passive voice. 

‘The floor was cleaned.’

Okay, so I see I have my ‘to be’ verb ‘was’.

And my past participle ‘cleaned’.

But it seems like I’m missing something.

I have the receiver but not the doer.

It's okay.

Like we mentioned before, for some  sentences, you may not have the doer. 

This is an example of a passive  sentence without the doer. 

‘The essay about the economy  was written by the student.’ 

Now, it's okay. I know this is a big sentence. 

But I know we can do it.

Because “boom” ‘by the student’.

There's our clue.

Also ‘was written’.

We have our past participle and our ‘to be’ verb.

This is a sentence written in passive voice.

And our last one. We're almost there. Stay with me. 

‘The best team won the football game.’ Good job team. 

Our team is our doer.

What did the team do?

What's the action?

The team won.

What did they win? They won the football game. 

This is definitely a sentence  written in the active voice. 

Ah, good job. That's some good practicing - recognizing  

sentences written in the active and passive voice.

Now, let's move on.

You now have a basic understanding  of active and passive voice. 

But you're not done yet.

Because you have homework.

You are going to change this active voice  

sentence into a passive one.

‘Mike taught the passive voice.’

Again, change this sentence into a passive voice  sentence and write it in the comments below. 

Also, you have a quiz.

You will find a link for the quiz in the description.

Please make sure that you ‘like’ the video as well as subscribe if you want to see more videos by me.

Until then, I’ll see you in the next video.