Student name: Jocelyn Cuevas

Velázquez

PASSIVES
Sentences can be active or passive

Active sentences
The focus is on the person who does the
action.
Sentence in passive:
The cake was eaten by
the children
Sentence in active:
The children ate the cake

Passive sentences
The focus is on the action or the thing the action
affects.
The passive voice often use by native English
speakers, they used in informal reported speech

Important things
you don't want to say who or what did the
action
you don't know who did the action
The object is the most important part of the
sentence
You can use the passive to change the focus of
your sentence

How to change from active to passive?

Identify the subject, the verb and the object
Move the object to become the new subject of the
sentence
What is the verb tense in the active sentence?
Conjugate the verb "be"(was or were)
Add the past participle of the main verb after "be"
Subject of the active sentence

when to use by?

If we want to include the person
who does the action in a passive
sentence (the agent)
 Student name: Jocelyn Cuevas
Velázquez

PASSIVES

EXAMPLES

STRUCTURE OF
PASSIVE SENTENCES

subject+verb+object

The children ate the cake

(active sentence)
The cake was eaten by the
children (passive sentence)

Thomas Edison invented

the lightbulb.
The lighrbulb was invented
by Thomas Edison