Hello!
This video is about when we use the passive voice.
Is it about 'who did it?', or is it about 'what was done'?
Hope you enjoy it!
We're looking at 'is given' and 'was done', the passive, first of all the present, 'is
given', and here's a poster for a nursery.
And as you can see the service is from 8 to 1, 2 meals, and word play.
So I'm going to just click up three phrases here, 'for five hours' is the first one, 'at
9 and at 12', and finally, 'make words with letters'.
Now I want to ask the question, 'what is done?'
I don't want to ask the question 'who does it?'
- I'll come to that later.
First of all, 'what is done?'
I'll just write it up here, 'what is done?'
And I've got three answers to that, first of all, 'they are given' - the children that
is - 'the children are given a meal'.
Secondly, 'they are looked after', 'they are looked after'.
And finally, 'they are shown how to' - we'll see what in a minute.
Now to those three sentences, which are not complete, I want to attach the three phrases
above.
So look at the three phrases, 'They are given a meal' - which one belongs?
Yeah, that one, good.
And 'for five hours' belongs where?
Take it, grab it, put it down here - 'They are looked after for five hours.'
And finally the last one, 'make words with letters', 'they are shown how to make words
with letters.'
Now there are three sentences, all passive, in which what we are talking about is what
is done.
The meal, the timing and the activity.
But we could also look at this in a different way.
Instead of saying what is done, we could turn it around and ask ourselves, 'who does it?'
I'll just write up there, 'who does it?'
Three people work at this nursery.
First of all Susan - Susan is the person who looks after them - I'll just write there 'Susan
looks after the children', 'Susan looks after them'.
And then the second one is Jane, this is Jane, Jane is the cook, so Jane gives them their
meals, I'll just write here 'Jane gives them their meals.'
And finally the third one, the last one is Sanjit, 'Sanjit shows them how to use the
letters', 'Sanjit shows them the letters.'
So we've looked at the same story in two different ways.
First of all, we've looked at what is done, the timing and the activity, and then we switched
and we looked at who does it.
Who does it is active, what is done is passive.
Now I'm going to rub all this out, just rub the whole lot out, and switch to the past
tense, so I'm just going to get rid of all of that, here we go, and I've put some dates.
There are five dates, which are all of course in the past.
The question now of course is when were these things done?
'When was it done?'
Now I'm going to put up five sentences of things that happened in the past, and give
you a chance to think about which date belongs to which one.
Here's the first one: the Olympic Games were held in London in... when?
Think about it.
Next one: The United Nations Organisation was founded in...
Think about that.
And the next one: the Taj Mahal, a great building in India, was finished in...
And the next one: John Kennedy was assassinated in... do you remember that?
And the last one: in New Zealand, women were given the vote in...
I'll give you a hint, it was earlier, the last one was earlier than you might think,
not very early but earlier than you might think.
Alright, you could pause the video now if you wanted to, and decide which one belongs
where, because I'm going to put them in now.
And here goes the first one, the Olympic Games were held in... yes that's the one, 2012.
And the United Nations Organisation was founded in... whoops didn't go, yes 1945.
And the Taj Mahal was finished in... 1653, that was a long time ago, it took them twenty
years to build it.
And John Kennedy was assassinated in... yes you remember this, 1963.
And finally, to finish, in New Zealand women were given the vote before any other major
country in 1893.
In all these sentences, we're interested in the time something happened.
We're not interested in who did it, so much as when it was done.
And it's very common to use the passive when we're interested in the time, the place, or
what was done, rather than who did it.
All right, that's all, bye for now!