Hi!
And welcome to LARN.
Today we'll focus on the passive form using the Present Simple.
Are you ready?
Let's take a look.
The first sentence is 'The gardener waters the flower'.
In this case our attention is focused on the gardener.
But what if we want to focus our attention on the flower?
Then we would say 'The flower' 'by the gardener'.
See if you can guess.
'The flower is watered by the gardener.'
So how do we make the passive?
Well, the object, in this case 'the flower', becomes the 'subject' of the sentence.
And the subject, in this case 'the gardener', goes at the end of the sentence and it's preceded
by the word 'by'.
So what happens to the verb?
The active form is 'The gardener waters'.
The passive form is 'The flower is watered.'
Waters.
Is watered.
So, when we use Present Simple, in order to make it passive, we need to use the verb 'to
be', in the Present Simple, so in this case 'is', and the past participle of the verb,
in this case 'watered'.
But, you might say, this is all very complicated.
Why do we need the passive form, anyway?
Well, actually, sometimes you really need it.
Sometimes, it's just because you want to focus your attention on something different.
For example, look at the sentence 'Mechanics fix cars'.
Here where do you think your attention is focused on?
Mechanics.
But if we want to focus our attention on cars, we're going to say 'Cars are fixed by mechanics.'
So that's the number one reason.
Number two reason?
Well, sometimes you just don't know who does the action.
For example, 'People say running is good for you'.
But who is 'people'?
Who are they?
We don't know and it's not really important to know so in this case we can use the passive
form and just say 'Running is said to be good for you'.
We don't know who says it but it's okay.
We still have the information that we want.
Okay.
So are you ready to try now?
Here are a few examples.
Let's take a look at example number 1.
There you go.
Now you know how to use the passive form.
Thanks for watching.
Bye!