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Innovation

This document discusses grammar, specifically the passive voice. It provides examples of the passive voice and has students practice identifying passive voice structures in a reading passage and changing active voice sentences to passive voice. Key information includes: - The passive voice focuses on the object/receiver of the action rather than the subject/doer. - In passive sentences, the agent performing the action is often omitted but can be included using "by". - Students are asked to identify examples of passive voice in a reading passage and change active sentences to passive.

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Mirella Revello
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64 views

Innovation

This document discusses grammar, specifically the passive voice. It provides examples of the passive voice and has students practice identifying passive voice structures in a reading passage and changing active voice sentences to passive voice. Key information includes: - The passive voice focuses on the object/receiver of the action rather than the subject/doer. - In passive sentences, the agent performing the action is often omitted but can be included using "by". - Students are asked to identify examples of passive voice in a reading passage and change active sentences to passive.

Uploaded by

Mirella Revello
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Grammar:

Passive voice
Match the beginning sentences to the ending sentences
Vocabulary

1. pneumatic (adj.)- operated by air pressure. Our car has pneumatic brakes.
2. circuit (noun)- a closed system of wires or pipes through which electricity or liquid can
flow. A defect was found in the water-cooling/electrical circuit.
3. supersonic (adj.)- faster than the speed of sound. A supersonic fighter plane.
4. sustainable (adj.)- able to continue over a period of time. Solutions put in place now
must be sustainable.
5. to pioneer (verb) - to be one of the first people to do something. It was universities that
pioneered these new industries.
6. to shrink (verb)- to become smaller, or to make something smaller. The productivity
improvements have shrunk our costs by 25 percent.
7. ubiquitous (adj.)- seeming to be everywhere. The mobile phone, that most ubiquitous of
consumer-electronic appliances, is about to enter a new age.
8. to replicate (verb)- to make or do something again in exactly the same way. Researchers
tried many times to replicate the original experiment.
Grammar focus

The passive voice

When we talk about inventions and discoveries, we often use the passive voice. This is because we want to
make the object (the thing which ‘receives’ the verb) the main focus of the sentence.
In the passive sentence, we are less concerned with the ‘doer’ of the verb (the
‘agent’) and more concerned with the ‘receiver’ of the action, so we put it at the
start of the sentence to make it the subject.

In most cases, the agent of the verb is not expressed in a passive sentence, but
if it is, it is usually expressed with the word ‘by’.

The form of the past simple passive is:


subject + was/were + past participle
There are seven examples of the passive structure in the reading text. Write
them on the lines below (the first one has been done for you):

a. In 1765, the steam engine was developed (by the Scotsman James Watt
and his contemporaries). ____________________________________________
b. ____________________________________________

c. ____________________________________________

d. ____________________________________________

e. ____________________________________________

f. ____________________________________________

g. ____________________________________________
2. Now try to change these active sentences into passive ones.

a. Active: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1991.


Passive: ____________________________________________
b. Active: Hugh Locke-King designed the motor racing circuit in 1907.
Passive: ____________________________________________
c. Active: Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin in 1928.
Passive: _____________________________________________

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