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you're watching chalk and talk by brian roads brought to you by business english pod dot com.
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Mhm Here are the main reasons we use the passive.
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Let's take a look at number one.
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My wallet was stolen.
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The active voice of that would be somebody stole my wallet in number one.
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We don't know who did the action somebody.
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So we put this into the passive.
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My wallet was stolen.
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No two.
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I was born in 1980.
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That's not really true.
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But there's your passive.
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I was born.
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Now everybody knows it was your mother who gave birth.
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So we don't have to mention her.
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Number one.
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Nobody knows number two.
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Everybody knows number three.
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It's not important who manufactured the camcorder this camcorder and here's your passive was manufactured in Japan.
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Nobody.
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Well not many people are going to ask, oh who manufactured it.
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We might talk about the company but not the actual people who did it.
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And finally number four, that's the book which was stolen.
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Here's your passive in this case.
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The reason we use the passive is because we want to emphasize the object in this case the book.
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So we want to put that as the subject of the sentence and you could argue perhaps that it's the same for 32 and one.
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We want to emphasize my wallet.
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That's the important thing that's happening.
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Not the unknown person.
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Number two, we don't want to mention your mother.
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Really I was born is the and we're emphasizing the subject.
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I it's the sentences about you and the same thing for three.
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So number four we want to emphasize the sub the object.
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So we put it as a subject and then change the change the verb to the passive voice.
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Uh that holds true for most of these in some way.
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I have three examples here that I'm going to use to change the active voice.
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We have the verb stole are going to and grow three different verb tenses.
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I'm gonna put these into the passive voice to show you how to change from active to passive.
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No one.
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The reason we would put this one in the passive is that we don't know who did the action.
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So we take the object my wallet and it goes to the front as the subject.
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My wallet.
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We take a look at the verb here stole.
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That's the simple past of the verb to steal.
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We used the simple past of the verb to be was and then we add the past participle of the verb to steel which is stolen.
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And do we need to say by someone?
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No, because we don't know who it is.
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So the by phrase at the end is unnecessary.
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So someone stole my wallet becomes my wallet was stolen.
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No two.
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The editors are going to review my book.
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Well, we would take the object once more and put it as the subject of my book.
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Then we look at the verb tense here are going to present continuous.
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We used the present continuous of the verb to be.
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My book is since it's singular, write my book is going to be reviewed.
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No, you might ask do we need to say by the editors perhaps you can put that in there if you think it's important.
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But quite often that by phrase is left out because the information that follows it is not necessary for the meaning of the sentence.
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Alright, for example.
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And and that holds true in number three as well.
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Example, here farmers grow apples around here.
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Probably that sentence wouldn't be used because we would use the passive there.
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So we'd say apples are grown and you might ask why are we using that passive like this, grow is the simple present.
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R is the simple present of the verb to be.
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Then we have the past participle of grow which is grown.
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So apples are grown around here and that would take the emphasis of apples and put it on the front.
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And everybody knows that farmers or orchards grow apples so we don't have to mention them at all.
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So there we have three examples of different verb tenses going from the active verb voice to the passive voice.
