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What is the passive voice in English? Why
do we need the passive voice, and how can
I compare it to the active voice in English? In
today’s lesson, I’m going to teach you all about
the passive voice step by step. There is going
to be a lot of information in today’s lesson,
so to help you practice, I have a test for you
with 10 questions. Please let me know your score
in the comments below. Did you get 10 correct
out of 10, or maybe just six correct out of 10?
Let me know. My name’s Arnel, let’s start. The
passive voice is the opposite of the active voice.
Let’s first look at three active sentences: "A
rich person bought the painting for $1 million."
"Someone stole my phone." "My mom accidentally
washed a red sock with the white laundry." We
know the subjects are "a rich person," "someone,"
and "my mom." They do the action. I’m going to
call these people the "doer" because they do the
action. But sometimes the doer is obvious. We know
a rich person bought this painting—of course,
who else can spend $1 million on art? So, we
don’t need the subject; it’s obvious. Sometimes a
subject is unknown. "Unknown" means we do not know
who did the action. Who stole my phone? I don’t
know. We don’t need the subject; it’s unknown.
Sometimes a subject is just not important. I
mean, do I mean my mom is not important? No,
I mean the result is the same. My mom, my dad,
I, the family dog—the subject is not important
because the result is the same. We don’t need
the subject. If your subject is obvious, unknown,
or not important, and we want to focus on the
action or the result, we use the passive voice:
"The painting was bought for $1 million." "My
phone was stolen." "A red sock was washed with
the white laundry." This is the basic idea of the
passive voice. You can see that the objects have
now become the subjects. They are now the
main focus: the painting, my phone, a red
sock. Don’t worry, I’m going to give you lots of
examples. Let’s keep going. Grammatical structure:
to form the passive voice, we need "be" plus
past participle. Remember your "be" forms,
and what’s the past participle? Verb number three:
walk, walked, walked; go, went, gone; do, did,
done. The past participle is always verb number
three. Here are five sentences in the passive
voice. We need to look at the structure. If you
can recognize a structure, you are 50% there:
"A new bridge was built for pedestrians."
Pedestrians are people who walk in a city,
so not drivers, not cyclists—they are pedestrians.
We see "was" plus past participle. "My grandfather
is given his medicine three times a day." "Be"
plus participle. "You don’t need to feed the dogs;
they have already been fed." "I can’t believe
I was cropped out of the picture." To "crop
something out" means you remove it from a
picture. You know, if you have pictures,
you can crop someone out. This woman was cropped
out of the picture. "If anyone finds out,
my secret will be exposed." "Find out" is a
great phrasal verb; it means to find information,
like, "I don’t know when the bank closes, but
I’ll find out." Okay, so in all five sentences,
the person who does the action—the doer—is again
obvious, unknown, or not important. If you want
to say who does the action, we can add "by" plus
person: "A new bridge was built for pedestrians
by…" You know, here it’s obvious—by construction
workers, by architects, by the city council. We
don’t need to say who. The most important thing is
now pedestrians have their own bridge. In English
grammar, the person who does the action is called
the "agent." This is a grammatical term which
you don’t really need to know. Just remember
"by" plus person. "My grandfather is given his
medicine three times a day by a nurse." "They have
been fed by me, by their owner, by Sam." See, the
agent here isn’t necessary. "I can’t believe I was
cropped out of the picture by my parents, by you,
by my best friend." In this last example, we can
clearly see that the agent really isn’t important.
The most important thing—the focus—is that my
secret will be exposed. Tip: the agent is only
necessary if you think it’s necessary to include.
Mini review: the passive voice is used when the
doer of the action is not important because
the doer is obvious, unknown, or not important.
The passive voice focuses more on the action or
result, not the "doer." We form the passive voice
using "be" plus past participle. If you want an
agent, you can add "by" plus person. Tenses? Yep,
each tense has a different form for the passive
voice. You know, in English, we have 12 tenses.
If you want to learn how to use the tenses, I
have a full lesson on this topic on my channel,
which I’ll link down below for you. So, for each
tense, things change a little bit in the passive
voice. Here, we have the 12 tenses and what their
passive forms look like. You can always pause this
video if you need more time to look at this. What
about these tenses here? Well, with these tenses,
the passive form isn’t used. It would sound very
unnatural to say something like, "had been being
eaten," "had been being discussed." No. I know
this looks like so much information, and you are
probably like this, but all of these structures
have something in common: "be" plus participle.
Am I going to give you an example for each tense?
Yep, get ready. Present simple—active voice:
"I make two YouTube videos every month." Passive
voice: "Two YouTube videos are made every month
by me." Do you think that’s necessary? No, I think
that’s pretty obvious. This is a present simple,
so sometimes students see "made." "Made is simple
past." No, the tense here is in the "be" form, so
it doesn’t matter what tense; you need the passive
voice always has that past participle. Trust me,
by the end of this lesson, you are going to
be sick of me saying "the past participle."
Present continuous—active: "The baggage handlers
are putting the bags on the plane." Passive: "The
bags are being put on the plane." Present perfect:
"Josephine and Carl have moved the chairs in the
classroom for the activity." "The chairs have been
moved so there’s more space in the classroom for
the activity." Present perfect continuous: "We’ve
been watching Squid Game on Netflix." Passive:
remember, the passive doesn’t work with this
tense. "Squid Game has been being watched on
Netflix"? No. Is it impossible to see this tense
in the passive voice? No, you might see it,
but it’s not common, and it sounds unnatural.
Past simple: "Carrie told everyone about the
meeting." "Everyone was told about the meeting."
Past continuous: "The current was pulling me away
from the shore." "I was being pulled away from the
shore." Past perfect: "I had set up everything for
the party." "Set up" is a great phrasal verb,
and the verb forms are set up, set up, set up.
This is an irregular verb—definition: to organize
everything for a party, meeting, or event. What
do you need when you set up a party? Decorations,
food, plates, drinks, music, etc. Passive voice:
"Everything had been set up for the party."
Past perfect continuous: "My team and I had
been discussing the project for quite some time."
Passive: no, not natural with this tense. Future
simple: "Save your work because this software
will erase everything at 12:00." "Save your work
because everything will be erased at 12." Future
continuous: "The window cleaners will be cleaning
the windows between 10 and 12." Passive: again,
not with this tense. Future perfect: "Hopefully,
my team and I will have reviewed all of
these applications by Friday." "Hopefully,
all of these applications will have been
reviewed by Friday." Future perfect continuous:
"Henrietta will have been working on our sculpture
for 6 months." Passive: nope, doesn’t work. Okay,
we’ve looked at all 12 tenses in their active and
passive forms, but there’s something important
you need to know. Here are three more active
sentences: "The plant died without sunlight." "My
dog goes wherever I go." "Clara is sunbathing."
Sunbathing is when you lie in the sun. You know,
cats—cats like sunbathing. How do I change
these sentences to the passive voice?
The answer is, I can’t. Why? Well, these verbs
are what we call intransitive verbs. These verbs
do not need an object. Intransitive verbs do not
need an object. Let me compare this to transitive
verbs. Transitive verbs need an object. "A
customer bought…" A customer bought what?
Buy is transitive; it needs an object.
"A customer bought three T-shirts." Oh,
now it’s clear. "Thousands of people use…" Use
what? "Thousands of people use the subway every
day." "Use" is transitive; it needs an object.
So, here’s the rule: only transitive verbs can
be used in the passive voice. "Three T-shirts
were bought." "The subway is used by thousands
of people every day." This works. So, if you’re
trying to convert a sentence from the active
voice to the passive voice and it’s not working,
maybe the verb is intransitive. It won’t work.
How are you feeling so far? We’ve looked at the
most important parts of the passive voice. Now
the lesson starts to get more advanced. Are
you ready? Let’s keep going with passive with
modal verbs. Here are the modal verbs we have
in English. I think you can recognize a lot
of these. Modal verb plus "be" plus—you guessed
it—the past participle. Active: "You can’t wash
that wool sweater in the washing machine; it’ll
shrink." Passive: "That wool sweater can’t be
washed in the washing machine." And wool is
sheep hair. "The sweater should be washed by
hand in cold water." "It definitely must not be
dried in the dryer." "Let me look at the label;
it might be made out of something else." Look,
it’s not wool; it’s actually acrylic. So,
you can see the passive voice can be used with
modal verbs easily. Now, let’s compare passive
infinitive and passive gerund. What are these?
Let’s take a look. In English, the infinitive
is "to" plus verb: to go, to play, to eat,
etc. You can see gerunds are verbs in their
"-ing" form: going, playing, eating, etc. Gerunds
look like a verb, but they function as nouns. How
do you think we form the passive with infinitives
or gerunds? "To be" plus past participle,
"being" plus past participle. You know, if your
brain is like this right now, I understand,
but please don’t worry. The most important thing
in today’s lesson is that you can recognize the
passive voice. You don’t need to be able to use
it right now. Examples are always helpful, so
let’s start with the infinitive. Active: "You need
to clean the table before you roll out the pizza
dough." Passive: "The table needs to be cleaned
before you roll out the pizza dough." And look,
you can use the passive voice and active voice
in one sentence, no problem. Active: "Teacher,
can you please move me to the intermediate class?
The pre-intermediate class is too easy." Passive:
"One of the students in my pre-intermediate
class asked to be moved to an intermediate
class." And sometimes, there isn’t always a
direct active-to-passive translation. Sometimes,
you just want to use a passive voice: "The guests
expect to be served their food on time." Are you
ready for gerunds? "Jenny from work keeps pushing
me around." And "to push someone around" means to
control someone; you keep telling them what to
do. It’s like you push them there, and you push
them there. Passive: "I’m tired of being pushed
around at work." "I chose Fred, Abby, and Louis to
work on the project with me." Again, there isn’t
always a direct active-to-passive translation. I
could make a passive sentence like this: "Fred,
Abby, and Louis were happy about being chosen to
work on the project with me." Last example: "Are
you looking forward to being promoted at work?"
I just have two more points to cover, and then
it’s test time. Stay with me; we are almost done.
Point number one: "My phone screen is cracked." We
can see "be" plus past participle—"cracked." No,
in this case, "cracked" is an adjective; it’s
describing how the phone looks. "I hope you’re
not bored." "Bored" is an adjective. You know,
there are a lot of "-ed" adjectives in English,
so be careful when you’re looking at a sentence.
Is it the passive voice, or is it an adjective?
Point number two: you already know by now that the
passive voice is used when the doer is obvious,
unknown, or not important. Many times, we also
use the passive voice to be polite. Why? Well,
we want to create space, we want to create space
between the doer and their action. Let’s compare
a business email. Active: "You have to pay the
invoice by the 15th." This is kind of accusatory:
you, you have to pay. It can be nicer to use the
passive voice: "The invoice has to be paid by the
15th." "When will you finish the report?" "When
will the report be finished?" You can see we shift
the focus away from the doer to be gentler. Test
time, finally! Here are 10 sentences. I want you
to decide if each sentence is active or passive.
That’s it: is the sentence active or passive?
Pause the video to do this. Before we look at the
answers, I want to tell you that if you want all
the notes for today’s lesson, you can join my
channel and become a member. As a member, you
can download all of the notes of this lesson to
review later. I’ll leave a link to join my channel
down below. And finally, here are the answers.
How did you do on the test? Please, please,
please let me know in the comments. I really
do love hearing from you. I really appreciate
you watching my lesson today. I hope you learned
something new, and why not give me a few example
sentences in the comments below to practice? Thank
you so much, and I’ll see you next time. Bye!
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About this lesson
A comprehensive guide to the passive voice in English with lots of real examples across different tenses.