hello everyone this is Dori welcome to my channel
I'm a teacher of English and today's video is another request
video but I'm sure that it will prove helpful
for most of you: it is about the passive
Voice. So--which is also very very helpful if you
intend to write a formal essay, okay so
first of all in order to fully understand the passive voice
you need to know very well the english tenses
so if you don't know the English tenses very well
it will be very difficult for you to follow, you will get confused
so assuming that you already know the English tenses
okay, let's take an active sentence first
general truth, a fact that's why we use
simple present over here they eat, tigers
eat okay so in this active sentence
we have our subject which means who
does the action who performs the action
who does sth. okay so in this case our subject is of course
do something what do they do? They eat!
Tigers eat. What do they eat? They eat
Zebras. So, in this case our object
is zebras. okay this is an active sentence and we want to transform it into
a passive one and of course now you may ask me why do we do something like
well apart from the fact that of course all languages have a passive voice
there are many reasons but mostly
sometimes the most important part
is what happened to the object this is what
we care about so we take the object
and we talk about what happened to the object
and we don't care about who did the action or anything like that
just keep this in mind and we'll explain this a little bit later
in this case if we only care about
the object what happened to the object in order to transform this
active sentence into a passive, we take
the object here and we make it
a subject for our passive sentence. So, we have the new subject
of our passive sentence is "zebras"
okay keep in mind that both sentences both the active and the passive sentence
meaning, you cannot change meanings you cannot change
tenses, you must use the same. So in this case, in order to
have the same meaning in the passive we have to transform
our main verb here into passive, into passive voice, so
how do we do that? okay the form of passive voice
is very simple we use the verb
"to be" according to the tense
and the type we have okay and the past participle
of our main verb. Now in this case
what do we do? we use the verb "to be"
in what tense? In Simple Present
because this is simple present here so how is the verb "to be" in Simple present?
It is: "I am, you are, he is, she is, it is,
we are, you are, they are okay
so in this case: "Zebras are" (they are)
we add the main verb in the past
participle of the main verb so we have Zebras are
eaten--here we go, our new passive verb
if we want to add this information who performed the action we use the preposition by
it wasn't that difficult, was it? Note sth very important here
that only the verbs which take an object
can have a passive voice not all verbs
have passive voice for example verbs that do not
take an object, such as "arrive",
"return" "die" these verbs and verbs
like that do not have a passive voice
so we just use them in the active Voice I'm sure you can understand that for example
"I am returned", "I am arrived"
"I am died" we cannot do these things
only active voice for verbs that do not take an object
okay now for you to understand the
passive voice a little bit better I will give you examples for every tense
we have already seen Simple Present so let's go
and see the rest okay here we go
here we have simple past this is an active sentence and we read it
someone we don't know who someone
stole my car this is simple past
so our passive voice sentence is going to be my car
we take the object over here and we make it the subject
of the passive sentence my car the verb "to be"
in simple past so "was" my car was
and the third participle "stolen"
in this case we can omit this information over here "by someone"
because this is not really important the important
and of course we don't know who, the important information is that my car
was stolen. okay now let's move on to simple
future we read the active sentence the doctors
will cure Mary's dad, the important thing here
is that Mary's dad is going to be all right obviously
doctors are going to cure him so
we take the object Mary's dad and we make it a subject "Mary's dad"
the verb "to be" in simple future is going to be "will be"
will be what? the third participle
of the main verb will be cured
by doctors we can omit that because
it is obvious okay so Mary's dad will be cured
we take the object again gradually we're getting the hang of this
I hope, so the fence becomes the subject
the verb "to be" in present perfect
so the fence has been the third
participle of the verb "paint" it is "painted"
So, "the fence has been painted by George"
here we can write by George because maybe we need
this kind of information. If the sentence
excuse me if the object was in the plural
the fences then the sentence would be
painted by George okay we are very careful of these things
here it is singular but if it was plural
this would have changed to "have been painted" by George
The thief had already robbed the house
when the police arrived so we have the house
already been, the verb "to be" in past
perfect: "had been" what? the third participle of the main verb
robbed in this case by the thief it is obvious we don't need this kind of
we can omit that, when the police arrived so the house had already been robbed
when the police arrived okay future perfect
don't worry I will have taken the exam by next month let's make it passive
the exam which is the object becomes the subject
the verb "to be" in future perfect "will have been"
will have been and the third participle taken
by next month present continuous
the cat is cleaning itself right now
so in this case this is an active sentence with present continuous
here the subject and the object
it is the same thing so we can omit it
altogether and go straight to the object
okay the verb "to be" in present continuous
participle the cat is being cleaned right now
washing the baby's hair the baby's hair
was the verb "to be" in the past continuous was being
participle, by mom okay of course we can use the passive voice with modals
too, for example can, must,
should, ought etc. let's see some examples
you must clean your teeth we take the object again
your teeth must the verb "to be"
in its clear form as an infinitive
the third participle must be cleaned, again, you shouldn't
have broken the plate here we have
as a subject, shouldn't have been
broken, the third participle here okay
so those of you who are going to write formal essays
either in IELTS exams or in any kind of exams for that matter,
you should know that passive voice is always preferred
in these kind of formal writings for example verbs
these verbs can form an impersonal construction in passive voice which is
for a formal essay so let's see some examples
of how you can use them for example
here we have an impersonal construction with
"it" in simple present because we're going to talk about
facts and general truths okay something that the whole world
knows we don't care who knows it we don't state that we don't say "by
the whole world" because it is
you know, it is obvious. so let's
these are just examples you can use them any way you like and
it will improve the appearance of your formal essay
okay I know that passive voice is not easy and also
you need a lot of practice with a lot of exercises in order to fully master it
but I hope that this helps you a little bit in order to understand it a little bit better
I strongly encourage you to go and do some exercises some online exercises
online and do some practice that way in order for you to see if
you have fully understood it and then come back here and ask me your questions here