Passive Active Voice REVIEW with example sentences + Homework + QUIZ

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.