Welcome to my English grammar course on the active and passive voice.

In this course I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about changing from the active voice to the passive voice.  

There will be a lot of homework quizzes as well as many examples to help you become true masters of the active and passive voice.

Are you ready to Start learning? Let's get to it. 

So before we can start switching our sentences from active to passive, 

it's very important for us to understand the different parts of a sentence. 

Let's look at our board.

We have a sentence written,  'The boy opened the door.'

This is an example of an active sentence

which usually follows the pattern of subject verb object.

Our subject the 'doer' is 'the boy'. 

But what did the boy do? 'The boy opened…' 

'open' is the example of an action.

What did the boy open?

The boy opened the door.

'the door' is the receiver or the direct object.

So again, before we can really switch our sentences from active to the passive, 

it's very important for us to understand the different parts of a sentence. 

And the more that we understand different parts of a sentence, 

the easier it will be to switching active sentences to passive sentences. 

So now let's switch our active sentence over to a passive one. 

Here's our sentence from before: 'The boy opened the door.' 

Now, we have, 'The door was opened by the boy.'

Like I mentioned earlier, for active sentences,  they follow the subject verb object pattern. 

Well it's a little bit different from the passive sentence. 

Before we had the receiver at the end of the sentence, 

now we have the receiver in the beginning of the sentence. 

'The door was opened…'

Wow.

Our verb is the same. Or the action is the same.

But we have a 'to be' verb added on.

'was opened' is our 'to be' verb plus the past participle of 'open'.

Now, it could also be these 'to be' verbs as well.

But, we're going to use 'was'.

And this will change depending on the tense that we're using in our sentence. 

We also have 'the door being opened by the boy'.

Now, the reason why we have it in brackets is because

sometimes we don't need to know who is the 'doer'.

In this sense, the boy is the 'doer'. 

And this 'by' helps us understand that it is the boy who is opening the door.

Let's look at some more examples.

Okay, so now we have examples of active sentences  that we're going to change to passive sentences.  

Let's look at our first one.

'The woman helped the man.'

We learned earlier that whenever we're changing active sentences to passive sentences, 

we are going to need to switch our doer and our receiver. 

In this one, the doer, who is the woman, is going to switch places with the receiver, who is the man, 

because now the man is the focus of the sentence and will now come to the front - the man.

But what's our action?

Well in our sentence before, our action is 'helped'. 

We're going to now change this to the past participle which,  

luckily for us the past participle, is 'helped'.

Now, we're going to add our 'to be' verb which is 'was'.

So the man was helped.

By whom?

The woman.

Which is now at the end of the sentence.

'The man was helped by the woman.'

Let's look at our next one.

'The cat bit the girl.'

Just like we learned before, we're going to switch our doer and our receiver.

So now the girl is in the front of the sentence.

'The girl… bit…' The past participle of bit? 

This one's a little bit different.

'bit' is going to change to 'bitten'

When we add our 'to be' verb 'was',

'The girl was bitten...'

By what?

The cat.

'The girl was bitten by the cat.'

'The knife cut the bread.'

'The bread was cut by the knife.'

I think we're getting this.

'The student answered the question.'

'The question was answered by the student.'

In our last one,'The teacher taught the class.' 

'The class was taught by the teacher.'

Wow. I think we're getting better.

Let's move on.

So earlier we changed some sentences from the active to the passive voice.

Well now, let's practice recognizing sentences in the active and passive voice.

Our first one, 'The bat hit the ball.'

hmm,

well, I can see that the doer of my action

is the 'bat'.

What did the bat do?

The action is 'hit'. 'The bat hit…' 

What's the receiver?

'the ball'

'The bat hit the ball.'

Oh, this is definitely

a sentence written in the active voice. 'The food was cooked by the man.'

Now, there are some big clues in this sentence.

'…by the man.' 

Oh, yeah. That's a clue.

Also, 'was cooked'.

Well here's our past participle and our 'to be' verb. 

This sentence, for sure, is a sentence written in the passive voice. 

'The floor was cleaned.'

Okay, so I see I have my 'to be' verb 'was'.

And my past participle 'cleaned'.

But it seems like I'm missing something.

I have the receiver but not the doer.

It's okay.

Like we mentioned before, for some sentences, you may not have the doer. 

This is an example of a passive sentence without the doer. 

'The essay about the economy was written by the student.' 

Now, it's okay. I know this is a big sentence. 

But I know we can do it.

Because “boom” 'by the student'.

There's our clue.

Also 'was written'.

We have our past participle and our 'to be' verb.

This is a sentence written in passive voice.

And our last one. We're almost there. Stay with me. 

'The best team won the football game.' 

Good job team.

Our team is our doer.

What did the team do? What's the action?

The team won.

What did they win? They won the football game. 

This is definitely a sentence written in the active voice. 

Ah, good job. 

That's some good practicing - recognizing sentences  written in the active and passive voice.

Now, let's move on.

You now have a basic understanding of active and passive voice. 

But you're not done yet.

Because you have homework.

You are going to change this active voice sentence into a passive one.

'Mike taught the passive voice.'

Again, change this sentence into a passive voice sentence and write it in the comments below. 

Also, you have a quiz.

You will find a link for the quiz in the description.

Please make sure that you 'like' the video as well as subscribe if you want to see more videos by me.

Until then, I'll see you in the next video.

Hello, everyone.

This is Mike from Shaw English.

Today, we're going to learn about active and passive voice in English with different tenses.

Now, I know many of you know how to use the active voice

but switching it to the passive voice can be somewhat confusing.

And then now, we're going to use different tenses as well.

Past tense, present tense and future tense.

Oh my gosh.

What are we gonna do?

No worries.

You are going to be masters of this very soon.

So make sure you stay until the end of the video

because we're going to do a lot of practice and you're going to have a quiz and homework.

Are you ready?

Let's get to it.

So let's review changing from active voice to passive voice.

So here, “The child is opening the door.”

We learned, from before, that active voices, they follow the subject verb object pattern.

Here our subject, or the doer, is 'the child'.

But what is the child doing?

“The child is opening ...”

Here we have 'ing' attached to our  verb, 'open', which makes 'opening'.

This is present continuous which means that the child is opening the door right now.

At this moment.

And of course the receiver is 'the door'.

Now, when we're switching over to passive voice,

we learned from before, that our doer and our receiver swap places.

So like in our sentence here, our doer and receiver are now in two different spots.

So 'the door' is now in the beginning of the sentence.

And 'the child' is at the end.

“The door is being opened by the child.”

'The door', still our receiver, is being opened.

hmm, so now our verb has changed a little bit.

Our action has changed.