UNIT 131.

Intermediate Grammar The Passive Voice

We use the Passive Voice when we focus on the action. Who is performing the
action is either unimportant or unknown.
For example, we could say: My house was robbed.
As we can see from the above sentence we do not know who performed the
action.
When using the Passive Voice in English note the following:

The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive
sentence.

The past participle is used as the main verb.

The subject of the active sentence becomes the object in the passive
sentence, or is not mentioned.

Lets look at some examples of the Passive Voice in the present, past and future
tenses and notice the changes which take place for each tense.

Present Simple tense

Active: John feeds the birds
Passive: The birds are fed (by John)
Auxiliary verb: am/is/are used

Present continuous
Active: John is feeding the birds

Passive: The birds are being fed (by John)

Auxiliary verb: am being/ is being/ are being are used
Present perfect
Active: John has fed the birds
Passive: The birds have been fed (by John)
Auxiliary verb: have been/has been are used
Past simple tense
Active: John fed the birds
Passive: The birds were fed (by John)
Auxiliary verb: was/were are used
Past continuous tense
Active: John was feeding the birds
Passive: The birds were being fed (by John)
Auxiliary verb: was/were being fed are used
Future tense
Active: John will feed the birds
Passive: The birds will be fed (by John)
Auxiliary verb: will be is used
Note: The following tenses cannot be changed into passive voice.

Present perfect continuous tense

Past perfect continuous tense

Future continuous tense

Future perfect continuous tense

Sentence having Intransitive verbs