The Passive Voice is not easy when you first learn it. The key to
understanding the passive voice comes when you practice changing a
sentence from the active voice to the passive voice. There will be
a lot of sentences to practice later in this lesson.
Active Voice: The man threw the pancake up in the air.
Passive Voice. The pancake was thrown up in the air by the man.
The first sentence sounds better. The second sentence sounds a little
strange.
However, sometimes the passive voice sounds much better than the active
voice.
Passive Voice: He was born in China.
Active Voice: His mother bore him in China.
- bear / bore / born
- bore = past tense
- born = past participle
The sentence in the passive voice sounds good. The second sentence
in the active voice sounds really, really bad. Sometimes only the
passive voice is used when speaking or writing, and this is why it's
so important to understand. |
