In general, the active voice makes your sentence, more direct, and, you guessed it, more active. The subject is something, or it does the action of the verb in the sentence.
With the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by some other performer of the verb.Â
In general, the passive voice is made up by the verb BE + PARTICIPLE form of the other verb
The passive voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. In other words, the most important thing or person (the object) becomes the subject of the sentence.
Example:
[ACTIVE] The car completely destroyed my bike.
Here we have a subject (the car) doing something (destroying the bike)
[PASSIVE] My bike was completely destroyed.
Here we have the object (my bike) suffering an action. What happened to the bike is more important than who or what destroyed it.
You can also say that “my bike was completely destroyed by the car“.
Â
Practice for B2First
Download PDF Grammar Content:
- Passive 1 - be done / was done
- Passive 2 - be done, been done, being done
- Passive 3
- Passive 4 - is said to / be supposed to
- Passive 5 - have something done
External Links and other useful resources:
