Passive Voice Crystal Clear

8

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

very well, let's get started!

okay, let's take an active sentence first

so, we have "tigers

eat zebras"which is also a

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

the tigers! okay

do something what do they do? They eat!

So, our verb is 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

that

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

must have the same

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)

okay so here we go! zebras

are, and now

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

"zebras are eaten" By whom?

if we want to add this information who performed the action we use the preposition by

"by tigers" okay now

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

you cannot say

"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

and for every case okay

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

present perfect: George has

painted the fence

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

it is: "has been" okay

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

"the fences have been"

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

Past Perfect

The thief had already robbed the house

when the police arrived so we have the house

again we make it the subject

what happened? had

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

information

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

don't worry

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

making it the subject the cat

okay the verb "to be" in present continuous

"is being" and the third

participle the cat is being cleaned right now

past continuous mum was

washing the baby's hair the baby's hair

was the verb "to be" in the past continuous was being

what? "washed" the third

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

your teeth must be and what?

the third participle must be cleaned, again, you shouldn't

have broken the plate here we have

present perfect so the plate

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

such as: believe,

know, say, consider, report

these verbs can form an impersonal construction in passive voice which is

great

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

Read the examples

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

there are millions of them

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

or in FB, T, and G+ I've added all three links down below

thank you very much for watching! take care, bye-bye!