Active and Passive Voice

Overview

Learn about active and passive voice, what a verb is, what the passive and active voice is and when and where we use them. This course is ideal for intermediate learners.

Introduction

In this course we are going to look at what active and passive voices are when it comes to writing sentences, and how these tools are used in different ways.

When you are deciding whether a sentence is written in the active voice or the passive voice, an important language trick that will help you to work this out is spotting the verb in the sentence.
Remember that when we talk about verbs we are really talking about doing words, or words that signal some kind of behaviour.
These can be physical behaviours: sing, run, jump, shout, wander.

But they can also be mental and spiritual behaviours: think, ponder, consider, exist, dream.

There are several different reasons for using the passive voice, including:
·       Not knowing who has performed a certain action
·       It is obvious who has performed a certain action
·       It is not important who has performed an action
·       The person performing the action has been mentioned earlier

· The sentence is about people in general, rather than one person

You will learn

Know what a verb is
Understand what the passive voice is
Understand what the active voice is
Know when and where we use active and passive voices

Enrolment options