Grammar: formation of the passive (lesson & exercise)

Lesson:

We're finishing off our first calendar month at ESL Lessons with a relatively simple topic: passives.

Simple? A lot of people have a terrible fear of passives. They see them as very complex, confusing and difficult. Well, the truth is that they are none of these things. Today's lesson is not about the meaning or usage of passive verbs; it's just going to focus on their form. We're going to learn how to make passive verbs today.

The formula, the only formula you'll ever need to make passives, is this:

to be + V3

That's it. Really. Every passive sentence has these forms. What does it mean? Well, let's take a look. 'To be' refers, of course, to the verb 'to be'. Depending on tense, that can mean any of the following: 'am', 'is', 'are', 'was', 'were', 'have been', 'has been', 'had been', 'will be', 'should be', 'must be', 'has to be', 'is going to be', 'will have been', 'should have been' and, in the case of passives, 'am being', 'is being', was being', etc. 'V3', verb three, is also called the 'past participle'. It's the third form of verbs that you learn through memorization and are listed in the back of every ESL textbook. For example, the 'V3' form of 'steal' is 'stolen' and the 'V3' form of 'find' is 'found'. Being regular, verbs such as 'need' or 'control' get their V3 forms just by adding '-ed': in this case, 'needed' and 'controlled'.

Okay. So, for example, 'was stolen' and 'will be needed' are passive verbs, because 'was' and 'will be' are forms of the verb 'to be', and 'stolen' and 'needed' are V3 forms of the verbs 'steal' and 'need'.

Again, today's lesson doesn't focus on the meaning of these verbs - just the formation of them.

A very typical passive-related exercise would be one in which the student is given active (i.e. 'normal') sentences and asked to change them into passive sentences. They may be given this sentence:

• They have found the missing girl.

And asked to turn it into this sentence:

• The missing girl has been found.

How can you do it? Well, it's actually quite easy. When we look at the first sentence, we can find its subject ('They'), its verb ('have found') and its object ('the missing girl'). The object of our active sentence becomes the subject of our passive sentence, so our passive sentence is going to begin with the words 'The missing girl'. Now, for the verb, we need to look at the active sentence and decide two things: 1) Which tense is the verb in? 2) Which verb is it?

In this case, we can see that the verb ('have found') is present perfect, and the verb is 'find'. Remembering our magic formula 'to be + V3', all we need to do is choose the present perfect form of the verb 'to be' and the V3 form of 'find'. Because 'the missing girl' (she) is singular, our present perfect form of 'to be' is 'has been', and the V3 form of 'find' is, of course, 'found'.

Another example:

• We will sell 500 books this week.

What do we need to do? The verb is 'will sell' and the object is '500 books'. So we need to put the object ('500 books') first, then the future simple form of 'to be' ('will be'), and the V3 form of 'sell' ('sold'). Keeping the time expression, we get:

• 500 books will be sold this week.

Let's look at a few more examples, with the verbs in blue and the subject of the passive sentence in red:

• You can't mix oil and water. = Oil and water can't be mixed.
• They are cleaning the office. = The office is being cleaned.
• Thieves stole Renoir's painting in 1995. = Renoir's painting was stolen in 1995.
• They have discovered a new galaxy. = A new galaxy has been discovered.
• They will punish you for your actions = You will be punished for your actions.

Exercise:

Change these active sentences into passive. Do not include the 'by agent' in your answer.

1. They built this building in 1949. = ______________________________
2. They are going to cancel my favourite TV show. = ______________________________
3. We have reinstalled Windows on all of these computers. = ______________________________
4. They are shipping my package to you at the moment. = ______________________________
5. You shouldn't take this medicine on an empty stomach. = ______________________________