The Passive Voice in English
📌 Lesson Contents
- 🎯 Lesson goal
- 🌟 What is the passive voice?
- 🔍 How do we make the passive?
- 🧩 Tables – All the passive tenses
- 🧠 Going deeper: sentences with “by”
- 🧠 Other useful passive structures (two objects)
- 🧠 Passive with modal verbs
- 🔄 Changing active ➔ passive
- 📋 Tables: common irregular verbs
- ❓ Frequently asked questions
- 🚫 Common mistakes to avoid
- 📌 Final summary
- 🎮 Gap Fill & Translation Exercises
🎯 Lesson goal
In this lesson you will learn to recognise, make and use the passive voice in English 📖 in all tenses, with modal verbs and in more advanced structures. You will see when and why to use it 🧠, and you can practise for real with the test at the bottom of the page! 🚀
🌟 What is the passive voice?
We use the passive voice when:
- ✅ We want to focus on the action or the result, not on who does it.
- ✅ We don’t know who does the action, it is not important, or it is completely obvious.
- ✅ We want a more formal, professional or impersonal tone (e.g. news, academic or scientific texts).
Active example: The chef cooked the meal. 👨🍳
➔ Passive example: The meal was cooked by the chef. 🍽️
🔍 How do we make the passive?
📌 General formula:
Subject (receiver) + verb “to be” (in the right form) + Past Participle (3rd column / -ed)
💡 It is always the helper to be that changes with the tense, while the main verb always stays in the past participle!
🧩 Tables – All the passive tenses
| Tense | Active form | Passive form |
|---|---|---|
| Present Simple | He cleans the room. | The room is cleaned. 🧹 |
| Present Continuous | He is cleaning the room. | The room is being cleaned. 🧼 |
| Past Simple | He cleaned the room. | The room was cleaned. 🏠 |
| Past Continuous | He was cleaning the room. | The room was being cleaned. 🧽 |
| Present Perfect | He has cleaned the room. | The room has been cleaned. ✨ |
| Past Perfect | He had cleaned the room. | The room had been cleaned. 🧴 |
| Future Simple | He will clean the room. | The room will be cleaned. 🔮 |
| Future “going to” | He is going to clean the room. | The room is going to be cleaned. ⏳ |
| Modali (can, must…) | He can clean the room. | The room can be cleaned. 💡 |
🧠 Going deeper: sentences with “by”
We often use by + agent to say who does the action, but only if this information is important:
- The book was written by Orwell. 📚 (It is important to say who the author is!)
- The cake was eaten. 🎂 (We don’t need to say by whom: the focus is the cake that was eaten.)
🧠 Other useful passive structures (two objects)
Verbs that take two objects (e.g. give, send, offer, teach, show, pay) can make two different passive sentences. The one with the person as the subject is the most common and natural!
Active: The teacher gave her a book.
- ➔ Passive 1 (person as subject – preferred): She was given a book.
- ➔ Passive 2 (thing as subject): A book was given to her.
✅ Both forms are correct!
🧠 Passive with modal verbs
Modal verbs follow this rule: Modal + be + Past Participle.
| Modal | Active | Passive |
|---|---|---|
| can | He can fix the bike. | The bike can be fixed. 🚲 |
| must | You must close the door. | The door must be closed. 🚪 |
| should | They should respect the rules. | The rules should be respected. ⚖️ |
| may | She may open the window. | The window may be opened. 🪟 |
🔄 Changing active ➔ passive in 5 steps
- Find the object: The chef cooked the meal.
- Put the object in the subject’s place: The meal…
- Put “to be” in the right tense: The meal was
- Add the past participle: The meal was cooked
- Add “by + subject” only if you need it: The meal was cooked by the chef.
📋 Tables: common irregular verbs (participle)
| Base | Past Simple | Past Participle | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| do | did | done | do / make |
| write | wrote | written | write |
| eat | ate | eaten | eat |
| see | saw | seen | see |
| give | gave | given | dare |
| take | took | taken | take |
| break | broke | broken | break |
❓ Frequently asked questions and clarifications
- When do I use the passive instead of the active?
➔ When we don’t care who does the action, or we don’t know, or when we want to stress the result and keep a formal or academic tone. - Does the verb “to be” change with the tense?
➔ Yes! It is the helper to be that changes (e.g. is, was, has been, will be), while the main verb stays the same, in the past participle.
🚫 Common mistakes to avoid
| Mistake ❌ | Correct ✅ | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The book is write by him. | The book is written by him. | “write” ➔ use the past participle = “written”! |
| The room is clean yesterday. | The room was cleaned yesterday. | Watch the past tense (yesterday)! |
| The letters was sent. | The letters were sent. | Plural subject (letters) ➔ use “were”! |
| The cake has eat. | The cake has been eaten. | Present Perfect passive ➔ has + been + pp! |
📌 Final summary
- ✔ The passive is always made with: to be + past participle.
- ✔ We use it when the agent is unknown, obvious, or when we want to stress the action/result.
- ✔ Remember to change to be to match the tense and the number of the subject.
- ✔ Be careful with the past participles of irregular verbs!
Passive sentences are very common in news, descriptions of processes and academic articles! ✨
Gap Fill & Translation Exercises
Test yourself! In the first 15 sentences, change the active into the passive or complete with the correct passive form. In the last 5, write the passive sentence in English from the clue.