How to Use the PASSIVE VOICE | English Homework + Quiz Learn English Grammar

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to Shaw English.

My name is Mike.

And today, I’m going to continue teaching you about the active and passive voice and

when and how to use it.

Now, I know this can be quite challenging,

but I know you're also doing your best and you're doing a good job.

Make sure you stay until the end of the video because you will have homework and a quiz.

Are you ready to get started?

All right, let's do it.

One of the main reasons why we use passive voice is because we want to emphasize

the receiver instead of the doer.

For example, “Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.”

In this sentence, which is an active voice,

Leonardo is our focus, the painter.

The Mona Lisa, the painting, is the receiver.

We want to switch them to where now the receiver is in the beginning sentence and the doer is at the end.

So now our sentence is, “The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo DaVinci.”

Our focus is now on the receiver, the Mona Lisa, rather than the painter, Leonardo DaVinci.

Another reason that we change the sentence to the passive voice, is because we do not

know the doer of the action.

For example, “Somebody stole my cell phone.”

I do not know who.

So instead, I can express this in the passive voice.

“My cell phone was stolen.”

And again, since we don't really know who did it,

we want to focus more on the phone instead.

“My phone was stolen.”

Another reason to use the passive voice could be the doer is just not that important.

For example, “The company was founded in 1955.”

We may or may not know who founded the company, but is not important.

What is important is that the company was founded in 1955.

Also, “The house was built in 1955.”

We may or may not know who built the house.

But again, it's not important.

What is important is the house was built in 1955.

Another reason to use the passive voice is because

sometimes we don't want to blame or say someone is responsible for something.

For example, “Mistakes were made.”

Now, mistakes were made by someone,

but we don't want to blame that person.

We don't want to say it is their fault. So instead,

we just leave them off and say,

“Mistakes were made.”

Another reason to use the passive voice is because

the doer is not a specific person.

For example, “English is spoken in many countries around the world.”

We could add “by many people”

but because it's a really an unspecified group of people,

we kind of just leave it off because it's not very necessary.

And the last reason why we use passive voice,

is for academic writing.

Whenever you're doing academic writing, such as essays or articles,

we want to make it as least personal as possible

and as professional as possible.

“I interviewed three people.”

Well you can see we have the pronoun ‘I’.

Well we don't want to use that.

We want to switch the sentence over to the passive voice.

“Three people were interviewed.”

I could say “by me”

but again, we want to take out the ‘I’ and 'MEs' make it less personal as possible

and just have “Three people were interviewed.”

Let's move on.

Awesome job, everyone.

I know you did such a great job. And I know it was tough.

But you did it.

You now have a basic understanding of the how and when to use the passive voice.

But you're not done.

You have a little bit of homework to do.

“The teacher graded the homework.”

I want you to take this sentence, change it into the passive voice, and put it in the comments.

Also you have a quiz.

In the description, you will find a link to the quiz.

If you really like this video, make sure you hit the like button, and also subscribe to see more lessons taught by me.

And until then, I'll see you all later.

Bye.