ACTIVE VOICE Full English Grammar Course with Tests and Homework

Hello everyone, I am Mike from Shaw English.

Welcome to my English grammar course on the active and passive voice.

In this course I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about changing from the active voice to the passive voice.  

There will be a lot of homework quizzes as well as many examples to help you become true masters of the active and passive voice.

Are you ready to Start learning? Let's get to it. 

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.

Hello, everyone.

This is Mike from Shaw English.

Today, we're going to learn about active and passive voice in English with different tenses.

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

but switching it to the passive voice can be somewhat confusing.

And then now, we're going to use different tenses as well.

Past tense, present tense and future tense.

Oh my gosh.

What are we gonna do?

No worries.

You are going to be masters of this very soon.

So make sure you stay until the end of the video

because we're going to do a lot of practice and you're going to have a quiz and homework.

Are you ready?

Let's get to it.

So let's review changing from active voice to passive voice.

So here, “The child is opening the door.”

We learned, from before, that active voices, they follow the subject verb object pattern.

Here our subject, or the doer, is ‘the child’.

But what is the child doing?

“The child is opening ...”

Here we have ‘ing’ attached to our  verb, ‘open’, which makes ‘opening’.

This is present continuous which means that the child is opening the door right now.

At this moment.

And of course the receiver is ‘the door’.

Now, when we're switching over to passive voice,

we learned from before, that our doer and our receiver swap places.

So like in our sentence here, our doer and receiver are now in two different spots.

So ‘the door’ is now in the beginning of the sentence.

And ‘the child’ is at the end.

“The door is being opened by the child.”

‘The door’, still our receiver, is being opened.

hmm, so now our verb has changed a little bit.

Our action has changed.

So we still have ‘is’.

And we have ‘being’, so we have our “to be” verb

but we must continue our present continuous and bring down the ‘ing’.

So, “… is being…” and we have our past participle ‘opened’.

“… is being opened by the child.”

And here we have our preposition with the doer.

And sometimes the doer is left out of sentences.

And that's okay as long as we know that the door is being opened.

Now, let's practice and learn about some more tenses.

All right, everyone.

Let's practice going from active voice to passive voice using different tenses.

Let's do it.

Let's go ahead and practice some of these tenses together starting with the present simple.

“The teacher helps the student.”

So we know that this is an active voice.

And now we're going to change it into passive voice.

“The student is helped by the teacher.”

And ‘is’ is our “to be” verb.

And the past participle would be ‘helped’.

Let's look at present continuous.

“The teacher is helping the student.”

Oh there's that ‘ing’ again.

And we'll switch that over to, “The student is being …”

ah and there's the present continuous back with us

and our “to be” verb.

‘helped’ there is our past participle.

“… by the teacher.”

Present perfect.

“The teacher has helped the student.”

“The student has been helped by the teacher.”

Past simple.

“The teacher helped the student.”

“The student was helped by the teacher.”

Past continuous.

“The teacher was helping the student.”

“The student was being helped by the teacher.”

Okay, so past perfect.

“The teacher had helped the student.”

“The student had been helped by the teacher.”

Future simple.

“The teacher will help the student.”

“The student will be helped by the teacher.”

Future continuous.

“The teacher will be helping the student.”

“The student will be being helped by the teacher.”

And everyone just remember that this tense is normally not used with the passive voice.

Future perfect.

“The teacher will have helped the student.”

“The student will have been helped by the teacher.”

So, everyone, how do you feel?

Feel more confident?

Awesome.

Hopefully, you have a much larger understanding of how to change active voice to passive voice

using different tenses.

Now, you're not done yet because you have homework.

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

Also, wait, don't go anywhere.

You have a quiz.

Okay the link for the quiz is in the description below.

If you enjoyed this video, please make sure you 'like'

as well as subscribe to see more videos taught by me.

And until the next video, I'll see you all later.

Bye.

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.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to Shaw English.

My name is Mike.

And today we're going to be reviewing the active and passive voice in English.

Now, we've already made a good amount of videos on the passive voice,

so if you haven't seen them, make sure you watch it here.

Today, we are going to start with reviewing the basic grammar rule for passive voice

as well as the how and when to use the passive voice.

We're going to do a ton of examples and give you so much practice,

that way you are going that way you are going to be masters of the passive voice.

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

Let's get to it.

Let's review the basic grammar for the active and passive voice.

We have a lovely sentence here,

“Dutch colonists founded New York in 1624.”

This is an example of a sentence that is written in the active voice.

We have our ‘doer’, the Dutch colonists.

We have our action ‘founded’.

As well as our ‘receiver’, New York.

See active sentences follow the Subject - Verb - Object pattern.

Again, our subject, our verb, and our object.

Here is our sentence written in the passive voice,

“New York was founded in 1624.”

So in our active voice sentence, ‘New York’ 

is a receiver and written at the end of the sentence.

Well now, in our passive voice sentence,

‘New York’ is brought to the front because it is now our focus.

Also, for our action, we need a ‘to be’ verb and the past participle.

In the active voice sentence, we've had… 

we have ‘founded’ which is written in the simple past tense.

Well, our ‘to be’ verb has to match with being simple past tense so we have ‘was’

and the past participle which is “founded in 1624.”

I can swear something is missing though.

What am I missing from this?

Ah! “ … by the Dutch colonists.”

We don't mention the Dutch colonists here which is our ‘doer’.

Why don't we mention the ‘doer’?

As I mentioned in previous videos, sometimes when you write sentences in the passive voice,

you leave out the ‘doer’ because the information is…

it's unnecessary.

Also, we're focusing on New York.

So again, there's no reason to mention the Dutch colonists here.

Let's move on to some more examples.

I need your help filling these blanks.

Can you help me?

Of course you can.

Let's read some of these sentences together.

“I ate the pizza.”

This sentence is written in the active voice.

“The pizza _blank_ by me.”

This sentence is written, that's right you guessed it, in the passive voice.

I need to figure out what word goes in the blank?

Well, the action is missing.

If I look at the active voice sentence,

I see that our action is ‘ate’ which is written in past tense.

We remember from earlier, that our actions in passive voice sentences

need a ‘to be’ verb as well as a past participle.

So I know that since this action is written in past tense,

my ‘to be’ verb also has to be written in past tense.

So...

let's write ‘was’

as our ‘to be’ verb.

But we still need a past participle.

So looking at our action, ‘ate’…

Let me think…

There is ‘eat’, ‘ate’, ‘eaten’.

‘eaten’ would be our past participle.

And of course, who was it eaten by?

Me.

“The pizza was eaten by me.”

And it was good pizza.

Let's look at our second example.

“The scissors or blank the paper.”

This is a sentence written in the active voice.

Our passive voice sentence is, “The paper was cut by the scissors.”

Well, since we have to figure out what's in the blank for our active voice sentence,

let's look at the passive one to help us with that.

“The paper was cut by the scissors.”

Well, I have my ‘to be’ verb, as well as our past participle.

Now we're going to… it's almost like we're going backwards here, right.

So, we know that our ‘to be’ verb, or the tense of our ‘to be’ verb,

has to match our action in our active voice sentence.

Our past participle is ‘cut’.

So when I think about what our action could be,

let me see…

What is …? This is ‘cut’, ‘cut’, and ‘cut’.

Wow.

So our action in our active voice sentence is ‘cut’

because it can't be ‘cutted’

because that's not a word.

So our past tense is ‘cut the scissors’, ‘cut the paper’.

Whoa, good job everyone.

Let's move on to some more examples.

All right, everyone. I need some help finding mistakes in these two sentences.

Both of them are written in the passive voice.

Let's look at the first one together.

“The book was wrote by Mike.”

Yeah, there's a mistake here.

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

But...

there's something about this past participle that just doesn't seem right.

Well, what is the past participle of write?

Let me see…

There's ‘write’, ‘wrote’, ‘written’.

Oh how did I not… how do we not know that? “written”

“The book was written by Mike.”

Yeah, that sounds right. I’m sure it was a good book.

Our next one.

“The criminal was catched.”

Again, I see that we have our ‘to be’ verb which is ‘was’.

But that feels right.

But there's something about ‘catched’ that doesn't.

This may not be the right past participle.

So let's think about the word ‘catch’.

Hmm.

We have ‘catch’, ‘caught’, and ‘caught’.

Oh our past participle is ‘caught’.

“The criminal was caught.”

And I’m glad.

Good job, everyone.

Let's move on.

I still need your help everyone.

Can you please help me figure out whether these sentences are written in the active

or passive voice?

All right, thanks.

Let's look at the first one.

“The dog licked my face.”

Well, looking at this sentence, I do not see a ‘to be’ verb.

And my action ‘licked’ is just written in past tense.

This is definitely written in the active voice.

“The rat was studied by the scientist.”

Whoa, we have a lot of clues here.

We can see that we have a ‘to be’ verb, ‘was’.

As well as, boom, we have a past participle.

And ‘by’.

We know that by sometimes tells us who's the ‘doer’.

Well this is definitely written in the passive voice.

“He kicked the ball.”

I don't see a ‘to be’ verb here.

And ‘kick’… it's like it's written in the past tense.

“He kicked the ball.”

This is definitely written in the active voice.

And our last one.

“All the patients were interviewed.”

Hmm…

Well we can see the word ‘were’.

This is a ‘to be’ verb.

As well as a past participle.

There is no ‘doer’.

So we also know that that's normal for passive voice sentences.

All right.

We did a good job again.

Let's move on to some more examples.

Okay, everyone.

Let's match the tenses in these active and passive voice sentences.

Let's start here with this active voice sentence.

“I am cleaning my room.”

The passive voice sentence of that is, “My room is _blank_ by me.”

I can see that I have a ‘to be’ verb, ‘is’.

But I’m not done.

It's incomplete.

Well, if I look at my action in the active voice sentence,

we have ‘cleaning’.

‘cleaning’ is written in the present continuous tense.

I know from earlier, that my ‘to be’ verb has to match with the same tense.

So, “My room is… “

‘being’ Oh, that's a great ‘to be’ verb to use.

‘being’

But I’m missing the past participle.

In our action, in the active voice sentence, we have ‘cleaning’.

So we have ‘clean’, ‘cleaned’, ‘cleaned’.

“My room is being cleaned by me.”

Awesome.

We're halfway there.

Our next sentence.

Written in the active voice.

“I have made a cake.”

And it's a good cake.

The passive voice sentence of that is,

“A cake has _blank_ made by me.”

Well just like before, we have our ‘to be’ verb, but it's incomplete.

We still have to finish it.

So let me look back at the active voice sentence

to try and help and see if I can figure this out.

I have ‘made a cake’.

Hmm.

This seems this is written in the present perfect tense.

And I know that my ‘to be’ verb has to match

in the passive voice sentence as well.

So, “A cake has…. been…”

“A cake has been made by me.”

Wow. Good job, everyone.

Let's move on.

Okay, students.

Let's see if we can find the mistakes written in these sentences.

Hmm, both are written in the passive voice.

“Your package will be delivering.”

Something doesn't seem right.

“Your package will be delivering.”

This part seems like it's great.

It's ‘delivering’.

That one seems a little bit odd.

I can see that I know it's written in the passive voice.

And I have a ‘to be’ verb.

And this is future tense.

This past participle is wrong.

So I think, no, I know the verb is ‘delivered’.

All right, let's look at our next one.

“I has been punished by the teacher.”

Oh, something doesn't feel right with this sentence at all.

So from here, from our action, on to our ‘doer’, we can see that this part is correct.

‘I has been’

I think we have the wrong ‘to be’ verb here.

So instead of saying ‘has’, we're gonna write ‘I have’.

“I have been punished by the teacher.”

Good job, everyone.

Let's move on.

For our final example,

let's review using the passive voice for academic writing.

Here, we have a sentence written in the active voice.

“In this study, I conducted a survey.”

Whenever you are doing academic writing,

it's important to leave out words such as, “I” or “me”.

So, you can switch from the active voice to the passive voice.

“A survey was conducted by me.”

Again, we want to avoid using words such as “I” or “me” because we are not the focus.

We want to focus more on the topic.

And in this case, the survey.

So we're going to cross out ‘by me’,

add a period, and have,

“A survey was conducted.”

Now that sounds great.

Let's move on.

Wow. Fantastic review everybody.

You did a great, great job.

Now, I know that you're becoming masters going from the active voice to the passive voice,

but you're not quite done yet.

You still have some homework to do.

Everybody loves homework, right?

I would like for you to change this sentence into the passive voice.

“Mike taught the passive voice.”

Again change the sentence into the passive voice and put it in the comments below.

Also, you have a quiz.

You will find a link in the description.

If you really really really really enjoyed this video,

hit the ‘like’ button as well as subscribe to see more lessons taught by me.

But until the next video, I will see you all later.

Bye.