Passive Voice - Learning English with our free Online Exercises. If you want to be able to use the passive voice with German verbs, you have to know the proper phrasing. For example, a sentence in the passive voice won't always define who was doing the action and instead it might use a phrase like 'von John' (by John) or if it is an inanimate object it could say 'durch den wind' (by the wind).
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The passive voice in English is used to express what is done to someone or something. Here are a few examples:
The company was sold for $5 million.
In each of these sentences, the subject of the sentences does nothing. Rather, something is done to the subject of the sentence. In each case, the focus is on the object of an action. These sentences could also be written in the active voice.
The owners sold the company for $5 million. Choosing Passive Voice
The passive voice is used to place focus on the object rather than the subject. In other words, who does something is less important than what was done to something (focusing on the person or thing affected by an action). Generally speaking, the passive voice is used less frequently than the active voice.
That said, the passive voice is useful to switch the focus from who is doing something to what is being done, which makes it especially useful in business settings when the focus is placed on a product. By using the passive, the product becomes the focus of the sentence. As you can see from these examples, this makes a stronger statement than using the active voice.
Computer chips are manufactured in our plant in Hillsboro.
Here are some other example sentences that a business might change to the passive form in order to change focus:
We have produced over 20 different models in the past two years. (active voice)
Study the passive voice below and then practice your writing skills by changing passive sentences to active sentences, or vice versa.
Passive Voice Sentence Structure![]()
Passive subject + to be + past participle
Note that the verb 'be' is conjugated followed by the participle form of the main verb.
The house was built in 1989.
The passive voice follows the same usage rules as all the tenses in English. However, some tenses tend not to be used in the passive voice. Generally speaking, perfect continuous tenses are not used in the passive voice.
Using the Agent
The person or people taking an action are referred to as the agent. If the agent (the person or people performing an action) is not important for understanding, the agent can be left out. Here are some examples:
The dogs have already been fed. (It's not important who fed the dogs)
In some cases, it's important to know the agent. In this case, use the preposition 'by' to express the agent following the passive structure. This structure is especially common when speaking about artistic works such as paintings, books, or music.
'The Flight to Brunnswick' was written in 1987 by Tim Wilson. Passive Used With Transitive Verbs
Transitive verbs are verbs that can take an object. Here are some examples:
We assembled the car in less than two hours.
Intransitive verbs do not take an object:
She arrived early.
Only verbs that take an object can be used in the passive voice. In other words, the passive voice is used only with transitive verbs.
We assembled the car in less than two hours. (active voice) Passive Voice Structure Examples
Here are examples of some of the most common tenses used in the passive voice:
Passive Voice Quiz
Test your knowledge by Conjugating the verbs in parentheses in the passive voice. Pay close attention to the time expressions for clues on tense usage:
Passive Voice Grammar Exercises
Answers:
Passive Sentence Exercises Pdf
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