English Grammar Explanations - Passive

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Passive
The passive is a grammar construction that uses
the auxiliary to be and the past participle of a
verb:.

My camera has been stolen.

The Mona Lisa was painted in 1503.
We are being followed.
She was seriously injured in the car crash.
You will be told when to come.
The school was built just after the war.
The ski race has been cancelled due to lack
of snow.

The passive has two main functions:

Firstly, we use the passive when we are more
interested in what happened than who did it. For
example, in saying My camera has been stolen
the speaker is conveying important information
about his camera. The camera is the focus of
interest, and so the speaker has made it the
subject of the sentence. He does not know or
care who took it. Similarly, in the sentence The
Mona Lisa was painted in 1503 the speaker
wants to tells us when the painting was done.
She is not interested in telling us who painted it,
or maybe she expects us to already know that it
was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
The passive can be used in all tenses. The
following list has examples of the most common
uses:
The classrooms are cleaned every
afternoon. (present simple)
A new road is being built behind the
school. (present continuous)
The boy was seen spraying paint on the
wall. (past simple)
I was late because the road was being
repaired. (past continuous)
The car thief has been caught. (present
perfect)
The painting had been damaged during the
war. (past perfect)
You will be shown how to do it. (future)
It must be done. (modal verb + simple
infinitive)

http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/rules/passive.htm

21/04/2014

English Grammar Explanations - Passive

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She likes to be praised when she does

well. (infinitive with to)
I hate being watched when I'm working.
(gerund)
Note: In all the above sentences, it is not
important to the speaker that s/he tells us who
(e.g., who cleans the classrooms, who is building
the road behind the school, who saw the boy
spraying paint). Important is: what (or when,
why, how).
The second important reason why we use the
passive is to follow the typical English sentence
pattern of Given-New. This means putting given
or old information at the beginning of the
sentence (as the subject), and following it with
new information (as the predicate). Example:
The second world war began in
September 1939. It was caused by
the invasion of Poland by German
troops. At this time Poland was
governed by the Polish Socialist
Party.
Here is the alternative, putting the new
information before the given or old, and using
the active not passive voice:
The second world war began in
September 1939. The invasion of
Poland by German troops caused it.
The Polish Socialist Party governed
Poland at this time.
Most native speakers of English find this kind of
text unusual and hard to read.
Do a quiz on this grammar topic.
Note: You may read advice against using the
passive. Microsoft's grammar checker in Word
alerts you to uses of the passive. From this you
may get the false idea that the passive is bad and
should be avoided at all costs. If you want to
read more about the passive, and when and how
to use it, this UNC Writing Center webpage is an
excellent starting point.

http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/rules/passive.htm

21/04/2014