Dangerous SmartphonesGrammar Focus: Passive for Report

Session 9Virtual ELT Edublog

Zahra Shafiee

Passive Voice for Report

The use of passive is controversial. That means that many people are not sure whether it is a good or useful thing to use.

The comprehension text looks at a report by the BBC that described

UK Health Protection Agency advice on the use of Smartphones.

Source: NewEnglishAcademy.com.

Review of Passive Voice

Simple Present

Simple Past

Future

Passive versus ActiveWhat happens to the word order? The active voice says WHO did WHAT and WHEN, nice and straightforward. The

subject, or the actor or the agent is at the front of the phrase. That is where our focus is – it says what is most important. For example:

The BBC published a report about Smartphones.

You can see that the subject is The BBC and that it is the actor of the verb published, and that the result or object of the verb is a report about Smartphones.

The passive voice takes this sequence and turns it all around. In the passive voice the object that is acted upon moves to the front and becomes the subject and therefore is most important. So, if we make our example in the passive, we get:

A report about Smartphones was published by the BBC.

More examples of active sentences becoming passive.

Active: The Health Agency conducted scientific studies. Passive: Scientific studies were conducted by the Health Agency.

Active: They haven’t found any bad effects yet. Passive: No bad effects have been found yet by them.

Do you see how the focus or the emphasis changes from WHO did WHAT? to WHAT is the result? The object becomes the subject – this is a very important change, as we shall see.

What happens to the verb? What happens when you make a passive form of an active verb?

Just add the correct form of to be and change the verb into the past participle.

Active: I changed this sentence. Passive: This sentence has been/was changed by me.

Like active verbs, passive verbs can be used to talk about the present, past and future. The only thing that changes when you want to change tense is the to be form.

If you want to make a negative passive sentence, just add not after the verb.

Bad effects of using Smartphones haven’t been found yet.

If you want to describe an action that hasn’t finished just change the to be verb to the progressive form.

Scientific studies are being conducted.

So Far, …

You can spot passive sentences just by asking a couple of simple questions.

1. What is at the front of the sentence – the subject of the verb or the object of the verb?

2. Is there a form of to be + a verb (past participle) in the sentence? 3. Does the sentence show the actor of the verb using by – or even, is

the actor missing?

When to use passive voice instead of the active voice?

WHEN: 1. You don’t know who the actor is. The validity of the report has been questioned. (But I don’t know who questioned it.) 2. You know who the actor is but it isn’t important right now. It was pointed out that rates of cancer should be monitored. (Who pointed this out is not

important.) 3. You actually want to be vague about who the actor is. Mistakes were made. (I know who made the mistakes but they wouldn’t like it if I told you.) 4. You really want to emphasize the result of the action. These mistakes should not be repeated. (These mistakes, not others.) 5. You are writing in a special area e.g. science reports. No conclusive links to infertility were found. (We write this way sometimes in science reports.) 6. You don’t actually know too much detail about what you are talking about. Some lives had been endengered. (But I don’t know whose and I’m not going to find out, OK?)

A Couple of Warnings!

We shouldn’t use passives in instructions. Part A should be attached to Part B.

Instead, we can be more direct here and use the imperative. Attach Part A to Part B.

And we shouldn’t use passive constructions that begin with It…. It has been noted that someone has written graffiti on the lavatory door again.

Sentences that start with It… don’t clarify or tell us anything. They just have extra meaningless words. We all want to know WHO noted it!

So why is this all controversial? What could possibly be wrong with passive sentences?

In English, it is usually very important to know WHO did WHAT and WHEN. We’re kind of explicit about this. Passive sentences can hide the WHO. They can make communication vague or confusing. They can disguise problems. They can let the person who is responsible escape from taking responsibility. In this way, sometimes passive sentences actually lack credibility – sometimes we find it hard to actually believe the person who is using them. In English language, and this plays out in the culture too, expects high levels of responsibility, clarity and precision. The passive allows us to be less clear and less precise. Maybe we should ask ourselves why exactly we don’t want to be clear or precise.

To conclude …

When using the passive, don’t forget to: make the object the subject of the verb use a form of to be + a past participle But perhaps most importantly, check why you or another writer or

speaker is using the passive.

There are other things to learn about the passive like how to use them with modals and causatives and we’ll look at them in later lessons.