Passive voice

 The Passive Voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. In the other words, the most important thing or person becomes the subject of the sentence.

Passive voice is a grammatical construction (grammatical form) in which the subject sentence does not take action, but instead receives action (as a receiver of action ). The action is followed up by  another agent (as a doer of action ) who can be mentioned or not. In contrast to the active voice , the subject is directly related to the verb  by acting as the actor of the action. Active sentences may be changed to passive, especially active sentences that use a transitive verb (need to be followed by a  direct object ).

Passive Voice function

In English lessons, passive voice is a sentence whose function is often underestimated. In fact, there are several functions of the passive voice that are crucial and cannot be replaced by the active voice. If you use active when passive is needed, you gonna embarrass yourself! You can see more about the passive voice function as follows.

To explain sentences where the subject is an inanimate object

The first function of the passive voice is to explain sentences whose subject cannot do a verb. Or in short, if the subject is an inanimate object. What is meant by inanimate objects here is not only physical objects, but also abstract objects, such as thoughts, values, feelings, and the like.

Example:

Those buildings were ruined by weather anomaly (passive voice)

The weather anomaly ruined those buildings (active voice)

To Describe an Event for which the Perpetrator is Unknown

The second function of the passive voice is to explain a sentence whose subject is not known with certainty. Due to this, the object of the final sentence has to be the subject in order for the sentence to be understood.

To describe an event whose object is more important than the subject

The third function of the passive voice is to describe events that focus on the object, not on the subject. This means that the object of the sentence is much more important to discuss than the subject.

This type of sentence can be found in scholarly presentations or other focused discussions. So for example, there is a meeting with the aim of reviewing "robots with human intelligence". So the focus of the meeting was a discussion of the object "robots with human intelligence".

To Describe Two Events in One Sentence

Well, here comes the passive voice function that people rarely talk about! The passive voice can be used in sentences that want to include two or more verbs. One goal: so that the sentence sounds varied. 

Passive Voice Formulas

The passive voice is  formed from the auxiliary verb and past participle (verb-3).

Auxiliary verbs  used in passive voice can be:

·         primary auxiliary verb  "be" (is, are, am, was, were),

·         a combination of two primary auxiliary verbs  (is / are being, was / were being, has / have been), or

·         combination of  primary auxiliary verb and  modal auxiliary verb  (will be, will have been)

The  past participle used is a transitive verb . Past participles are  obtained by adding -ed, -en, -d, -t, -n, or -ne to the  base form, which  are  regular verbs . In the  base form, it is  an  irregular verb , the  past participle  is inconsistent.

Examples :

1.  I noticed that a window had been left open.

2. Our house was cleaned yesterday

3.A movie is going to be watched by us tonight