Contenido

INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................................3
ANALYSIS........................................................................................................................................3
Meaning/Use..................................................................................................................................3
Form...............................................................................................................................................4
Pronunciation.................................................................................................................................5
LEARNER PROBLEMS/TEACHING SUGGESTIONS............................................................................6
Problem 1.......................................................................................................................................6
Suggestion 1...................................................................................................................................7
Aim.............................................................................................................................................7
Procedure...................................................................................................................................7
Evaluation...................................................................................................................................7
Problem 2.......................................................................................................................................7
Suggestion 2...................................................................................................................................8
Aim.............................................................................................................................................8
Procedure...................................................................................................................................8
Evaluation...................................................................................................................................8
Problem 3.......................................................................................................................................8
Suggestion 3...................................................................................................................................9
Aim.............................................................................................................................................9
Procedure...................................................................................................................................9
Evaluation...................................................................................................................................9
Problem 4.......................................................................................................................................9
Suggestion 4.................................................................................................................................10
Aim...........................................................................................................................................10
Procedure.................................................................................................................................10
Evaluation.................................................................................................................................10
BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................................11
APPENDICES.................................................................................................................................11

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 1
INTRODUCTION

From grammarians to English students the subject of Passive Voice is a matter of great discussion.
By the age of five, when most of all the grammar has been acquired, English speaking children do
not exhibit the adult standard of passive production. Regular youngsters manage to do so until
their ninth year, whereas for deaf people this only happens until they reach the age of seventeen
or eighteen (Keddie, 2002). This shows how abstract and sometimes useless passive can be
considered by both native speakers and learners.

Contrary to what Lewis (1986) states, I believe learners are provided with the passive voice
structure very early in their learning process. As a result, more often than it should be, teachers
instruct students with a rigid formula that limits their chances of naturally using this structure,
rather than just mechanically transforming sentences from active to Passive Voice.

I believe providing students with more functional/tangible use of this structure will help them
notice when and how to use it, which is my learners’ biggest concern about this topic.

ANALYSIS

Meaning/Use
Use of Passive Voice in English tends to be narrowed down to expressing ideas in which the
interest is in the action not in the ‘doer’. In other words, the person performing the action of the
sentence is not important. It is often seen as a pure stylistic variant to the active voice (Lewis,
1986).

Active Voice  They built those monuments recently

Passive Voice  Those monuments were built recently

However, whenever we use this structure, the order our ideas are presented changes. This, turns
out to be significantly helpful to organise the information in order to express: a) different ideas
while talking about the same subject, b) heavier ideas at the end of a sentence – allowing these to
be longer, and c) objective/impersonal thoughts – as in academic and scientific writing (Swan,
2009), or in legal texts.

a) She rested for three hours; then she was seen outside.
b) They were annoyed by our mom telling them to be quiet.
c) Forty-five people were tested.

Additionally, not only does it enable us to organise a text in order to make it easier to understand
for the reader or listener (Willis, 2009), but allows us to give active constructions an alternative
way to be expressed naturally.

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 2
Trying to divert the reader’s focus, as well as maintaining the topic consistency, is done by re-
formulating the information according to a different point of view, which is only plausible using
the Passive Voice (Thornbury, 2005). Here, Thornbury reminds us passive is to allow new
information to be placed in the rheme slot, but most importantly that the object can be placed in
the theme slot – usually where the subject goes.

Topic (theme) Comment (rheme)

Bolivar defeated the Spaniard conquerors.
 The Spaniard conquerors were defeated by Bolivar.

Consequently, passive voice is more frequently used in EST (English for Science and Technology)
than in general English. For example, RAs (Review Articles) are dominated by impersonal and
agentless passive constructions (The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics)

Finally, the passive can be easily misunderstood with an adjective because some words have
passed into the language as such (Lewis, 1986), or because finished-result verbs can have two
meanings: referring to the action, or describing the result (Swan, 2009).

She was surprised.

She was surprised by her children.

Form
The subject of a passive verb corresponds to the object of an active/prepositional verb. Only if the
‘active’ subject is expressed, we call the noun the ‘agent’ and it is written after the preposition ‘by’
(Swan, 2009). If the agent is ignored, it is also referred as a short be-passive (Pullum, 2010). The
‘passive’ subject is then followed by ‘to be’, which is followed by the Past Participle (P.P.) form of
the main verb.

We spoke Quechua
C before 1492 - ACTIVE Object

Quechua was spoken before 1492 (by us) - PASSIVE Subject

A stranger has paid for your lunch - ACTIVE

Your lunch has been paid for - PASSIVE

Passive Voice is impossible to form with intransitive verbs (e.g. live, come), and it is seldom used
with some stative verbs (e.g. be, have). Also, those verbs that have two objects (i.e. a direct and an
indirect one) can have either of them as the ‘passive’ subject (Swan, 2009).

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 3
Similarly to active, passive constructions can occur in all tenses even in the continuous ones (Swan,
2009) Nonetheless, they are unusual (Lewis, 1986).

Subject Verb to be P.P.

Main Verb in the Past

Participle: regular (asked) or
is/are/am ……………………………………………………(Present Simple)
I/You/She/He/It /We/They

was/were ………………………………………………….. (Past Simple)

have/has been ………………………………………….. (Present Perfect)
had been……………………………………………………. (Past Perfect)
is/are/am being…………………………………………. (Present Continuous)

irregular (done)
was/were being ………………………………………….(Past Continuous)
have/has been being ………………………………… (Present Perfect Continuous)
had been being…………………………………………. (Past Perfect Continuous)
will/can/should/might/may/would/must/shall/could be… (Modal Verbs)

We can also use this construction with other preposition besides ‘by’, which tends to be over-use
by learners (Parrott, 2004).

The vegetables were cut up in the kitchen/on the table/into julienne

He was killed with a knife.

Expressing an action is unexpected, possibly unwelcome or involuntary, and showing that an

achievement has been faced with preparation or difficulty, is possible through the use of the ‘get’
instead of ‘be’ as the auxiliary verb (Parrott, 2004).

My twin brother and I got separated when we were five.

A sentence where the object is the recipient of an action and the subject is at certain degree
responsible for what happened, but did not do it, is called a causative sentence (Parrott, 2004). In
such statements, we use ‘have’ or ‘get’ as auxiliaries in order to show what we arranged for a
person to do for us.

She had her nails done earlier today.

Finally, passive constructions may also have no tensed verb and occur as adjuncts

That said, however, Korea is Korea, not the Philippines.

Or it may be embedded in active clauses (Pullum, 2010).

The government had the case investigated by the police.

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 4
Pronunciation

Since passive is used in old tenses, phonetic analysis depends on lexical choice. Invariably, weaken
forms of the verb to be are used and the stress falls on the information-bearing words.

All the wine is carefully stored.

/wɑɪnəs,keəfəlɪ’stɔː(r)d/

Consistently, /ə/ is used in the unstressed forms of to be, while vowel-consonant catenation takes
place. The same connected speech features happen in negative and question forms.

The dogs haven’t been fed.

/,dɒgsəvəntbɪn’fɜd/

Were cars invented in 1940?

/wə,ka:sɪnventɪdɪn/

As well as in causative statements.

Sara had her phone fixed

/hədə(r),fəʊn’fɪkst/

LEARNER PROBLEMS/TEACHING SUGGESTIONS

Problem 1

After reading some active and passive voice examples to a group of businessmen in a monolingual
A2 level class (L1 Spanish), they had a very hard time identifying the correct agent.

Luckily, Mr Harris was welcomed by the sales staff.

The employees were congratulated by the senior staff.

Four out of five of these learners thought the agent for these sentences was Mr Harris and the
employees. This is because of the word order students are familiar with, but also because they lack
the listening skills that are required to identify weaken forms and past participles.

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 5
Suggestion 1
Aim

Different texts analysis during class to consciously check whether or not learners identify the real
agent in contradictory facts while allowing them to look back and check, which is not possible in a
listening task (Parrott, 2004).

Procedure

I could bring some pictures with situations that have opposite facts (appendix 1) and use them in a
very similar way as Thornbury’s (2002) procedure. First, I show the pictures to students and ask
them to match each picture with a sentence I read aloud. Students can then compare their
answers before being provided with the written sentences. Once the sentences have been
checked as a whole, I make sure students cannot read the sentences and ask them to use the
pictures in order to reconstruct the sentences from memory while working in pairs. In this way,
students can read their sentences aloud for checking, and compare them to the original sentences.

Evaluation

By allowing students to recognise the given structure in a text, the meaning becomes less obscure.
This shows them the word order is not enough to determine who the agent of a clause is.
Additionally, it helps learners notice the weak pronunciation of to be when using the passive.

Problem 2

While covering the different tenses using the passive voice, a monolingual group of Colombian
students (B2), told me it was a very simple structure: “you only need to change the object for the
subject, and use to be plus the past participle”. Nonetheless, they enquire when it was proper and
expected to use it.

Most B1/B2 students are very skilful when they are asked to shift sentences from active to
passive1. Nevertheless, it is extremely rare to hear it when they speak, and they often do not know
when to use it in a written text.

1
Lewis writes about this, as expressed in Meaning/Use in this essay.
Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 6
Suggestion 2
Aim

To provide learners with one valid reason as well as a helpful way to know when to use the passive
voice when having a conversation or writing a text.

Procedure

Based on the “Domino Idea” by Keddie (2002), I plan to raise my learners’ awareness on when it is
appropriate to use passive constructions. To begin with, I will provide my students with a set of
given questions which answers are orientated to contain the passive (appendix 2). Students try to
answer the questions using their smartphones and share the responses with their partners. If
learners do not come up with passive structures, I can show them the domino pattern they are
supposed to follow. Otherwise, they will produce some unnatural sentences:

Q: What happened to Charlie Chaplin’s body on March 1 st, 1978?

A: A man stole it

A: It was stolen

In this point, I need to encourage my learners to stick to the domino pattern and ask themselves if
they should use active or passive voice to respect such an arrangement. I will then socialize with
my learners how the information should be presented when it is known and when it is new to the
speaker and hearer, or to the reader.

Evaluation

With this, my students might be better at recognising which part of a clause is more important. By
practising the use and later focus on the form the passive voice will sometimes spontaneously
arise.

Problem 3

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 7
Learners who are taught the passive voice for the first time tend to have difficulties using the
auxiliary verb ‘to be’. They may leave it out before the past participle, or just mix it up with other
forms of ‘to be’ with similar pronunciation to that of ‘been’ (Parrott, 2004). This reminded me of an
extremely dedicated student I once had. He was a 58-year-old engineer whose main focus was to
be extremely accurate.

He was baffled with the atypical “marriage” between ‘to be’ and the past participle. For him, the
former was meant to be followed by the present participle – like in the Present Continuous, while
the later should only be preceded by ‘have’ as in the Present Perfect. Seemingly, difficulties as such
may rise among learners who believe language is processed word by word (Willis, 2009).

Suggestion 3
Aim

To give A1 students who tend to be logical and deductive learners the opportunity to unravel the
real meaning and use of the passive voice.

Procedure

I create a short text that includes all three tenses with explicit time expressions (e.g. right now,
now, ever, never, etc.) to help students understand the context. I give the text for my students to
read it individually in English, and ask them to translate it working in pairs or groups. Once this is
done, they should not be able to see the original text, and, using their translation, retranslate it
back into English. Afterwards, I show them the original text in English for them to compare it with
their own versions.

Evaluation

By retranslating a text for reconstruction tasks, students get to make comparisons between their
output and that of a more proficient writer of the language (Thornbury, 2001). Learners will
probably come up with questions during the translation process, which may lead to probable
parallel structures between L2 and L1, and will provide them with a better insight on the correct
use of each tense.2

Problem 4

2
Students will then notice how to express things happening now: ‘to be’ + -ing, life experiences: ‘have’ + Past Participle,
and ideas where the agent is not necessarily relevant: ‘to be’ + Past Participle.

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 8
While teaching to a group of teenagers, I used a set of small cards with prompts for them to use
active/passive voice. They were supposed to recognise the tense and use proper grammar as they
wrote the full sentence on the whiteboard to get points.

For active For passive

I … with my… every morning My favourite videogame … by …

It did not take them long to realise they were meant to use the passive for constructions with ‘by’.
However, once they were asked to produce a short text including such structure, they wrote some
of the following:

a) I was admitted by the hospital

b) It was looked by everyone
c) My dog was accidentally hurt by a knife

Systematically, students use the wrong preposition to introduce the agent. They may over-use ‘by’,
particularly where ‘with’ is necessary (Parrott, 2004). They also fail to include any other fixed verb-
preposition combination.

Suggestion 4
Aim

To allow my students to identify possible verb-preposition combinations without using ‘by’, in

order for them to think of others and write a short composition using them.

Procedure

I provide my students with an interesting text full of passive constructions in which they are able
to highlight the sentences where ‘by’ is not used but rather another preposition takes its place.
They might also notice some sentences written in the passive do not necessarily need to include
the agent after a preposition. After having identified such elements, I ask them to brainstorm in
groups other phrasal verbs. Once they socialise their verbs, they are asked to write a short
composition using the passive voice not using ‘by’.

Evaluation

Since the experience of learning grammar from authentic texts encourages students to study
independently, this approach is considered economical and efficient (Thornbury, 2002).

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 9
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reference and Teachers’ Resource Books

- Parrott, M. 2004 Grammar for English Language Teachers (2nd Ed) Cambridge University
Press
- Thornbury, S. 2005 Beyond the Sentence: Introducing discourse analysis Macmillan Books
for Teachers
- Thornbury, S. 2002 How to Teach Grammar (4th Ed) Pearson Education Limited
- Yule, G. 1998 Explaining English Grammar Oxford University Press
- Thornbury, S. 2001 Uncovering Grammar Macmillan Heinemann
- Lewis, M. 1986 The English Verb: An exploration of Structure and Meaning Language
Teaching Publications
- Willis, D. 2009 Rules, Patterns and Words: Grammar and Lexis in English Language
Teaching (4th Ed) Cambridge University Press
- Swan, D. 2009 Practical English Usage (3rd Ed) Oxford University Press

Journal Articles

- Keddie, J. 2012 The Passive Voice – The Domino Idea (Practical Ideas) MET vol. 16, no. 1
- Pullum, G. 2010 Fear and Loathing of the English Passive Language and Communication
vol. 26, no. 2 June, 34-44

APPENDICES

Appendix 1

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 10
Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 11
 Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 12
Ángel E. Correa-Pedreros
Grammar: Helping Learners Understand and Use Passive Voice 13