This is New York in Slow English.
Hi everyone and welcome to Part 2 of the passive voice.
Before we begin, please be sure to click on the subscribe button over here.
In Part 1 of this video I showed you a lot of examples of my husband and I using the
passive voice during our conversation as we took a hike.
In reality, we don't really use the passive voice that often.
In reality, we generally speak where the subject is the thing that is doing the action.
And it's doing it to an object.
We expect this sort of construction when we're speaking.
And we really do look for it when you are writing.
So, it's really important for you to be able to spot, or to see when you are speaking or
writing in the passive voice, and then fix it.
So, first let's talk about how you can identify the passive voice.
There are 3 things to listen for. Number 1: Are we using some form of the verb "to be"?
Number 2: Are we using a past participle?
Number 3: Is there a phrase "by someone"?
These are 3 clues that will help you figure out if we are using the passive voice or not.
Unless you have a really good reason for using the passive voice, you should work on repairing
your sentence by turning it around into the active voice.
Last a viewer posted this really helpful infographic on my Facebook page.
I love this graphic because it shows so clearly how to fix a passive voice when you hear it.
Let's look at these sentences a little more closely.
In the left column you can see different English tenses.
In the middle, you can see examples of this sentence written in the active voice in different
tenses.
And on the right you can see the same sentence written in the passive voice.
Now, when we want to fix a passive voice sentence and turn it into an active voice sentence,
we start by looking at the verb "to be".
What is the tense that it is in?
This will be the tense in the active voice sentence.
Then look at the past participle in the passive voice sentence.
This will be your new verb.
If you have the words "by somebody" then that will be your new subject.
If you don't have those words, then you have to guess according to the context of the sentence.
Now, let's listen to the video again.
I'm going to stop it after each example of a passive voice and give you time to write
down how you would repair it.
Last week I went to Colorado to visit my daughter.
And while I was there, I went to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Even though it's May, it's still very wintery there, and the road was closed because of
all the snow.
Wow.
Looks like the road is closed.
The road is always closed in the winter.
Here's our first truly passive voice sentence.
How would you fix it?
We know that the sentence is in the present tense because the form of "to be" is in the
present.
And we know that the active verb is going to be the word "close".
Do we know who the subject is?
Not really.
But we can guess that it's the Park.
So, the sentence would be "The Park always closes the road in the winter."
Alright.
Now you try the rest.
I"ll stop each time and give you the correct answer.
They close the road pretty much from October till June.
Looks like the road is still being scraped for snow.
It looks like they are still scraping the road for snow.
All the hiking trails were buried by the snow.
So we decided to just hike the road instead.
The snow buried all the hiking trails.
We walked for about 5 miles, climbing steadily up into the mountains, and in all that time
we only saw one other person.
This road makes for an amazing hiking trail.
Yeah.
It's not very steep.
It was graded for cars.
They graded it for cars.
We're almost to the tree line up here, and there's a lot of damage out here from the
beetle that bites into these trees.
Look at those trees.
They've been chewed on.
Beetles have chewed on them.
These are the high mountains of Colorado, and this reminds me of the Donner Pass and the
story of the guys in the 1800's who tried to make it through here.
It was a small party of people that were coming up through the pass, and a snowstorm came
in, and they were stranded in the middle of the pass over the mountains.
The storm stranded them in the middle of the pass over the mountains.
They got horribly snowed in.
The storm snowed them in.
Yeah, I guess their survival skills were really tested.
the storm really tested their survival skills.
And in the end, didn't they have to do something really extreme?
In the end, it is said that they ate each other.
Some people say that they ate each other.
We definitely have some snow up here.
Hey!
It's great out here!
The sun's out, and we are rewarded for our efforts.
God (or the universe) rewards us for our efforts.
We took this little trail, which luckily had been broken by somebody in front of us.
Somebody in front of us had broken the trail.
It was named Trail Ridge by the Park, and was formed from the narrow footpaths the Ute
Indians left behind.
The Park named it Trail Ridge.
The Ute Indians left behind narrow footpaths that formed it.
You can see that the further we walked along this road the deeper the snow got.
These very high walls were carved out of the snow by the snowplows ahead of us.
The snowplows ahead of us carved the high walls out of the snow.
I love my new boots.
Can you imagine?
Only moccasins were worn by the Indians.
The Indians wore only moccasins.
I can see them working on the road up ahead.
I wonder if the road will be opened by June when all the tourists start to come back?
I wonder if they will open the road by June?
Just before where the snowplows were working, we ran into this very nice man who had run
all the way up to the top of the mountain.
You went a lot further than we did.
So what did you see up there?
Yeah.
So, I went up to Rock Cut, just on the downward side from Rock Cut.
And there's huge snowblowers up there that are clearing off the road.
So, there's probably a good 15-20 feet of snow beyond there that they're trying to clear off.
You could look down and see that the road is being plowed.
You could look down and see that they are plowing the road.
Alright.
See you later.
Take care.
Have fun.
Thanks.
We knew that soon the road ahead of us would be blocked by snow.
So, we turned around at this sign and headed home.
We knew that snow would block the road soon.
Ok.
So, in summary: we use passive voice when we want to put more emphasis on the object.
When we want to put more emphasis on the thing that is having action done to it.
Sometimes we also might use the passive voice if we don't really know who's doing the action,
or if we don't really want to say who's doing the action.
Otherwise, use active voice.
That's what mostly use.
And especially look out for this in your writing.
See if you can recognize passive voice sentences by looking for the verb "to be" in some sort
of form, followed by a past participle, and sometimes the phrase "by somebody".
If you see this, see if you can fix your sentence.
Thanks a lot for watching.
Be sure to subscribe.
And I'll see you next time on New York in Slow English.