Hello, everyone. This is Mike from Shaw English.
In today's basic English video,
I’m going to be teaching you about the active and passive voice in English.
Now many of you know how to use the active voice,
but you might have a tough time switching over using the passive voice.
It's okay. No worries.
By the end of today's video, you're going to understand it all very well.
Make sure you keep watching until the end of the video
because there will be a quiz and some homework.
You ready? Let's go.
So before we can start switching our sentences from active to passive,
it's very important for us to understand the different parts of a sentence.
Let's look at our board.
We have a sentence written, ‘The boy opened the door.’
This is an example of an active sentence
which usually follows the pattern of subject verb object.
Our subject the ‘doer’ is ‘the boy’. But what did the boy do?
‘The boy opened…’ ‘open’ is the example of an action.
What did the boy open? The boy opened the door.
‘the door’ is the receiver or the direct object.
So again, before we can really switch our sentences from active to the passive,
it's very important for us to understand the different parts of a sentence.
And the more that we understand different parts of a sentence,
the easier it will be to switching active sentences to passive sentences.
So now let's switch our active sentence over to a passive one.
Here's our sentence from before: ‘The boy opened the door.’
Now, we have, ‘The door was opened by the boy.’
Like I mentioned earlier, for active sentences, they follow the subject verb object pattern.
Well it's a little bit different from the passive sentence.
Before we had the receiver at the end of the sentence,
now we have the receiver in the beginning of the sentence.
‘The door was opened…’ Wow. Our verb is the same.
Or the action is the same. But we have a ‘to be’ verb added on.
‘was opened’ is our ‘to be’ verb plus the past participle of ‘open’.
Now, it could also be these ‘to be’ verbs as well.
But, we're going to use ‘was’.
And this will change depending on the tense that we're using in our sentence.
We also have ‘the door being opened by the boy’.
Now, the reason why we have it in brackets is because
sometimes we don't need to know who is the ‘doer’.
In this sense, the boy is the ‘doer’. And this ‘by’ helps us understand that
it is the boy who is opening the door.
Let's look at some more examples.
Okay, so now we have examples of active sentences that we're going to change to passive sentences.
Let's look at our first one.
‘The woman helped the man.’
We learned earlier that whenever we're changing active sentences to passive sentences,
we are going to need to switch our doer and our receiver.
In this one, the doer, who is the woman, is going to switch places with the receiver,
who is the man, because now the man is the focus of the sentence and will now
come to the front - the man.
But what's our action?
Well in our sentence before, our action is ‘helped’.
We're going to now change this to the past participle which,
luckily for us the past participle, is ‘helped’.
Now, we're going to add our ‘to be’ verb which is ‘was’.
So the man was helped. By whom?
The woman.
Which is now at the end of the sentence.
‘The man was helped by the woman.’
Let's look at our next one.
‘The cat bit the girl.’
Just like we learned before, we're going to switch our doer and our receiver.
So now the girl is in the front of the sentence.
‘The girl… bit…’ The past participle of bit?
This one's a little bit different.
‘bit’ is going to change to ‘bitten’
When we add our ‘to be’ verb ‘was’,
‘The girl was bitten...'
By what?
The cat.
‘The girl was bitten by the cat.’
‘The knife cut the bread.’
‘The bread was cut by the knife.’
I think we're getting this.
‘The student answered the question.’
‘The question was answered by the student.’
In our last one, ‘The teacher taught the class.’
‘The class was taught by the teacher.’
Wow. I think we're getting better.
Let's move on.
So earlier we changed some sentences from the active to the passive voice.
Well now, let's practice recognizing sentences in the active and passive voice.
Our first one, ‘The bat hit the ball.’
hmm,
well, I can see that the doer of my action
is the ‘bat’.
What did the bat do?
The action is ‘hit’. ‘The bat hit…’
What's the receiver?
‘the ball’
‘The bat hit the ball.’
Oh, this is definitely
a sentence written in the active voice.
‘The food was cooked by the man.’
Now, there are some big clues in this sentence.
‘…by the man.’ Oh, yeah.
That's a clue.
Also, ‘was cooked’.
Well here's our past participle and our ‘to be’ verb.
This sentence, for sure, is a sentence written in the passive voice.
‘The floor was cleaned.’
Okay, so I see I have my ‘to be’ verb ‘was’.
And my past participle ‘cleaned’.
But it seems like I’m missing something.
I have the receiver but not the doer.
It's okay.
Like we mentioned before, for some sentences, you may not have the doer.
This is an example of a passive sentence without the doer.
‘The essay about the economy was written by the student.’
Now, it's okay. I know this is a big sentence.
But I know we can do it.
Because “boom” ‘by the student’.
There's our clue.
Also ‘was written’.
We have our past participle and our ‘to be’ verb.
This is a sentence written in passive voice.
And our last one. We're almost there. Stay with me.
‘The best team won the football game.’ Good job team.
Our team is our doer.
What did the team do?
What's the action?
The team won.
What did they win? They won the football game.
This is definitely a sentence written in the active voice.
Ah, good job. That's some good practicing - recognizing
sentences written in the active and passive voice.
Now, let's move on.
You now have a basic understanding of active and passive voice.
But you're not done yet.
Because you have homework.
You are going to change this active voice
sentence into a passive one.
‘Mike taught the passive voice.’
Again, change this sentence into a passive voice sentence and write it in the comments below.
Also, you have a quiz.
You will find a link for the quiz in the description.
Please make sure that you ‘like’ the video as well as subscribe if you want to see more videos by me.
Until then, I’ll see you in the next video.