Passive Voice Example (Learn English)

Hello. This is Jack tofluency.com, and in this English lesson, I'm gonna

give you an example of the passive, and I used the passive in one of my recent

videos so I'm gonna show you the clip from that video, and then go through it

on the whiteboard, so here is that clip now... The Biltmore Estate is the largest

privately owned house in the United States and it was built between 1889

1895 by George Vanderbilt. So, the video was talking about the Biltmore Estate which

is the number one tourist attraction where I live and in the video I said the

following, "It was built between 1889 1895 by George Vanderbilt." So, I'm using the

passive here because I want to put the focus on the Biltmore Estate, ok, using

the pronoun 'it' here - but I want to put the focus on the building and when you

do that that is when you use the passive. Now, in this example it works really well

because we're more interested in the building rather than who built it so when you're

talking about when something was built we generally do this in the passive if

you want to focus on the person who built it then you'll use the active -

"George Vanderbilt built the Biltmore Estate between 1899 and 1895." But as I say

we want to put the focus on the Biltmore Estate - the building - that's why I am

using the passive here. Now, below the video there are more examples of how to use

the passive, so check those out in the description - and please share this video

if you found it interesting.

Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time!