Passive voice grammar tutorial. In this lesson I'm going to show you when to use passive and how to form a passive. I'm going to show you how to form a passive for every tense in the English language. Take a look at the following sentences: I have closed the door. The door has been closed by me. The first sentence is an active sentence, the second sentence is a passive sentence. Now usually we turn active sentences into passive sentences so what we do is, the object of the active sentence becomes that subject of the passive sentence and the subject of the active sentence becomes the object of the passive sentence, so I has become me and the door has become the subject of the passive sentence. Now when do we use a passive? I'm going to tell you some technicalities be not alarmed the passive is not hard but there are some things that you need to know. We use a passive when the subject of a verb so in the example before, is more important than the person or thing carrying it out the object. So in the example before the door was more important than me closing it. The object of the passive form is usually left out because is not important or as in my example preceded by the way it 'by' When we want to changean active sentence into a passive as I already said, the object if the active sentence becomes that subject of the passive sentence. The passive always need to contain a form of the auxiliary verb to be and the past participle. Remember the English language has regular and irregular verbs. So for the regular verbs a past aprticiple is made by adding 'ed' to the base from of the verb or we use its own unique form, so for instance take - took - taken the past participle will be taken know the auxiliary verb takes the tense if the verb in the active sentence, so when we change an active sentence into passive we need to put verb to be in the tense of the active sentence. The main verb in the active sentence is turned into past participle. Now I don't hope that your head is spinning because it's really quite easy I'll show you. So we are going to turn an active present simple into a passive present simple. She buys tomatoes Now remember we're going to swap she and tomatoes around so we're going to start with tomatoes. A passive is made by the verb to be and the past participle so we need to pick the correct form of the verb to be for tomatoes which is 'are' here so Tomatoes are bought by her. Remember: to buy - bought - bought. Another example the present continuous. An active present continuous is They are taking down the police station. For the passive form we need to maintain that continuous form that's quite hard so we need either to use to use: am, are or is and then the continuous form being and the past participle. Don't forget to put being into a continuous passive when your active sentence was present continuous you have to maintain that you can't swap tenses.The police station is being taken down. So please note that we've put the police station into the slots of the subject in the passive sentence as it is important by whom the police station is being takendown. So again don't forget to put in being. Let's have a look at present perfect an active present perfect is: I havve painted the door so we are going to change it into a present perfect passive and remember the door has to become the subject. So a passive is made by have or has and then a form of to be and since it is perfect here we need to use the perfect form of the verb to be so here it is been and the past participle of the verb to paint. The door has been painted. So pay attention, in the active form it was I have but since in the passive form the door has become third person singular you need to use has. Now the past tenses, first the past simple active: They sold the car yesterday. Remember just as in the present simple we need to use a form of 'to be' so was or were and the possible participle. The car was sold yesterday. Past continuous active They were cleaning the house. So to make it into a passive we will make the house the subject of the passive form. Remeber don't forget to put in being Passive: was or were + being and the past participle. The house was being cleaned it was done by them, but that's not important the past perfect, the active past perfect they had given him a job and the passive we use had + been just as in the present perfect and past participle to give gave given. He had been given a job. www.englishgrammarspot.com

• published: 14 May 2013
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