The passive voice (extended explanation)

Dear students, 

Today's class is going to be very practical. We are going to practice the use of the passive voice, which you may already know from last year. It won't be repetitive as we are going to study more complex structures, which you did not study last year, for instance, the causative and the passive in all tenses. 

We are going to get started by watching a video with an explanation about it. It is in Spanish, so listen to it very carefully and let's start learning!

How to make the Passive in English (Summary) 

We make the passive by putting the verb 'to be' into whatever tense we need and then adding the past participle. For regular verbs, we make the past participle by adding 'ed' to the infinitive. So play becomes played. Click here to learn about irregular verbs.

Tense	Active	Passive
present simple	I make a cake.	A cake is made (by me).
present continuous	I am making a cake.	A cake is being made (by me).
past simple	I made a cake.	A cake was made (by me).
past continuous	I was making a cake.	A cake was being made (by me).
present perfect	I have made a cake.	A cake has been made (by me).
pres. perf. continuous	I have been making a cake.	A cake has been being made (by me).
past perfect	I had made a cake.	A cake had been made (by me).
future simple	I will make a cake.	A cake will be made (by me).
future perfect	I will have made a cake.	A cake will have been made (by me).

Are you ready to practice? 

1. The present simple passive 

Go to this site if you want to practice the passive voice with the present simple tense

2. The past simple passive

Go to this site if you want to practice the passive voice with the past simple tense.

3. The future simple passive

Go to this site if you want to practice the passive voice with the past simple tense.

4. The present perfect passive

Go to this site if you want to practice the passive voice with the past simple tense. 

5. All the passive voices

Go to this site if you want to practice the passive voice with all the tenses.
You can practice more with the following quizlet set.

For further information check the grammar appendix from our book on page 127.

6. Verbs with two objects

Read this short explanation before doing the next exercises. 

Some verbs that have two objects can make two different active sentences, and so two different passive sentences too:

Give

• Active: He gave me the book / He gave the book to me.

You can choose either of the two objects to be the subject of the passive sentence.

• Passive: I was given the book (by him)/ The book was given to me (by him).

Other verbs like this are: ask, offer, teach, tell, lend, promise, sell, throw. 


Go to this site if you want to practice the use of the passive voice with verbs with two objects. 


For further information check the grammar appendix from our book on page 127.

7. The causative

We use the causative in English to say that we have arranged for someone to do something for us.
He had his jacket cleaned.
(He didn't clean it himself.)
The causative is formed with 'have + object + past participle' The past participle has a passive meaning.

Questions and negations of the verb 'have' are formed with do/does or did in the past simple.
Did you have your camera fixed?

We also use 'have something done' to talk about an unpleasant experience.
Peter had his phone stolen last night.

In informal conversations we can use 'get' instead of 'have'.
She's getting her hair done again.

It is important to have the correct word order:
'John had his car repaired.' is very different to 'John had repaired his car.'
In the first sentence John  arranged for someone else to repair his car. In the second sentence he did it himself.

The causative can be used with most verb forms and is also formed with the infinitive and -ing forms.
He should have his car repaired.

It's worth having his car repaired. 

For further information check the grammar appendix from our book on page 127. Click on the link below and let's practice! 

Source: https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/the-causative 

Homework!!!

Exercises 1-4 (the ones on the right side of the page), page 127