Passive Voice

Use

• The passive is used when the focus is on the

action.
• it‘s not important who or what is performing
the action, but the action itself is important
The streets are cleaned every day.
A thief was arrested yesterday.
The exams will be corrected next week.
 Passive verb
Structure: Verb to be + past participle (regular verbs -ed /
irregular verbs 3rd column)
Present simple passive:
am / is / are+ past participle
Past simple passive:
was /were + past participle
Future simple passive:
will be + past participle
Present perfect passive:
have / has been + past participle
 Passive Voice
• Affirmative
All my friends are invited.
A new shopping centre is being built here.
• Negative
Some houses will not be painted.
My mobile phone can’t be repaired.
• Interrogative
Was the window broken in the morning?
Has the rubbish been taken away?
 Active to passive
• the object of the active sentence becomes the subject
of the passive
• the verb BE in the same tense as the verb in the active
sentence and the main verb in past participle.
• The subject becomes the agent with the preposition by.
Active : My brother cleans this room every day.
Object

Passive: This room is cleaned by my brother every day.

Subject agent
 By Agent
• to show who did the action, we use BY followed by
a noun or an object pronoun.
➢This house was built by my grandfather.
I => me she => her
you => you he => him
we => us they => them
➢I opened the door. => The door was opened by
me.
➢She cleans the room.=> The room is cleaned by
her.
 Omission of by agent
• The by agent is omitted when it is obvious, when the
agent is unknown or is not relevant.
The streets are cleaned every day.
A thief was arrested yesterday
The exams will be corrected next week.
The window has been broken.
The museum was built 2 years ago.
It was designed by Renzo Piano.
The museum is visited by thousands of people
every year.