Active and Passive Verb Forms - Basic English Grammar

Instagram no YouTube Facebook hahaha hi everybody welcome back to our weekly live stream my name is Alisha and today we're going to talk about the active voice and the passive voice in English this is a very common question I get from you so we're going to discuss what these two things are and how to choose when to use them so please as you join send us a message in the chat and make sure to like and share the video so other learners can find today's lesson we'll begin in about two minutes scraped I see people on YouTube already hi everybody Daniel faithful so wrongly why pair five on all the hard names today shady bah he shut Daniel Lindsay hello from Haiti Lindsey is from Haiti Wow don't get many people from Haiti welcome I see one person on Facebook hola Omar hello Shuaib hello there tall hello great okay we will wait a couple minutes for other people to join while we wait announcements one as always free stuff from the link below the video on YouTube and above the video on Facebook if you're watching on Instagram please go to YouTube or Facebook I will show you some of these a bit later unless we're gonna do the video again today okay so this is a few example these are a few examples of the free things the free vocabulary and its phrase cheat sheets you can find from that link so please check it out that's announcement one announcement to is if you have not seen it yet I talked about this last week but we have a new culture video our most recent US culture video this is a screenshot from the video I posted this on social media this is about us supermarkets so if you to see a little bit about what it's like to shop at a supermarket in the US and compare it to your country please check out this video which is on the English class 101 YouTube channel so please go check that out send us your comments there too and let us know if there's something else you want to learn about culture in the US okay someone says do you speak Spanish though okay let's go to the last thing I wanted to talk about today ah no I already talked about it alright that's good um so I'm going to share the video and get started with today's lesson for today's lesson I've prepared it as like a grammar lesson a little bit to introduce these two voices and I hope that you in the chat can send lots of examples of active and passive voice so we can check out your sentences and we can help each other and make fixes and so on too so please send lots of your examples in the chat today and we can practice together alright I will share and we will begin today's lesson with the active voice the active voice so first I want to explain what active voice is used to do why do we need the active voice we'll begin here with this explanation a long explanation I'm afraid but in active voice when we use the active voice what's called active voice the focus of your sentence the focus of your statement is the person or the thing doing the action so the person in this case like me for example or the thing like a marker or a whiteboard or a camera that's the focus of the sentence so the focus is the person or the thing doing the action so we can understand that person or that thing as the actor the actor so yes the word actor in English means like movie star someone who is really in the movies but actor here actor in this case for today's lesson means the person or the thing that is doing something that is the actor so the actor the actor is the subject of our sentence so that's the person or the thing that is doing something they're doing something this is a key difference a key point for today's lesson so we use active voice a lot in English I know in some languages they prefer to speak with passive voice which we'll talk about in a moment but in English we like to use the active voice a lot in English using the active sounds confident it sounds like we know all the information it sounds like we are prepared to share everything we are not hiding anything so active voice is preferred in a lot of different cases in English I'll talk about some other situations later let's look at some examples and for you who are watching I'll write this down here in the chat in the chat whether you're watching live or not live send oops sorry send and active sorry active voice send an active voice sentence so practice writing these two and if you can think about how you might change it to passive later so in the chat send an active voice sentence I'll share a few examples to get you started so first I finished my report I finished my report so in this sentence this isn't these are all active voice sentences in this sentence who is the actor I in this case my subject I so the person doing something is me I the action is finished so this is a past tense sentence I finished what did I finish my report I finished my report so we know the person who did the action me we know the action and we know like the thing that received the action so my report is the thing that was finished that was passive we'll get to that in a moment so I finished my report very basic sentence some examples are coming in good someone sent the passive version of this let's use active voice for an hour active voice for now okay good another one I joined a party yesterday great nice example of an active sentence I've watched your videos a lot very nice okay I study on YouTube great nice examples in the YouTube chat okay on Facebook let's see I'm watching Alicia perfect nice active sentence I am watching your lectures as Indian very nice someone says I don't know if that's an example or just a comment okay good I did my laundry on YouTube perfect I finished my training good I run in the street good okay good nice examples so this is an active sentence some of you are sending passive voice sentences yes they are correct but they are passive will practice passive more later so let's try another one let's change the actor so here my subject was me so I finished my now let's change it I erased this sorry then that okay the next example that man stole my bag that man stole my bag so here my actor is that man over there I don't know him so I say that man that guy maybe to that dude hey that guy stole my bag or that man stole my bag so my actor is that man specifically somewhere over there there's nobody there okay so the action stole stole stole is the past tense of steal steal so to steal is to take something that is not yours so don't do this so that man stole what did he steal my bag so my bag is receiving this action stealing my bag what's the thing that was stolen we'll talk about passive in a moment someone says very bad man he is indeed okay so this is another active voice sentence we know the person doing the action we know the actor that man we know the action here and we know what received the action my bag here okay other examples are coming in I'm programming a web app maybe Dave hi uh Alicia is still okay there's some very interesting examples you guys are sending um that girl stole my heart oh no a great example Daniel very nice lots of people are saying that woman stole my heart why are there so many of those examples that's kind of funny they're like really I see like seven on screen right now the same example sentence that's pretty funny okay someone says that person bothers me good good good okay that woman stole my heart what with all these examples the same example that's funny I hope that not true for everybody but that's funny that many of you had the same example okay the dog is biting me oh no is that true from Kay on Facebook great great okay let's go to the last example of n all right my coworker let's change the actor again my coworker is eating my lunch sadface my coworker is eating my lunch sad face this is my nice sad drawing hmm my coworker is eating my lunch so here the actor is my coworker what's a co-worker a co-worker is your colleague the person you work with the person you share an office with so my coworker it's my subject my coworker what's the action is eating my coworker is eating so this is happening now my coworker is eating I'm using the progressive form what is my co-worker eating my lunch oh no so sad face my coworker is eating my lunch so I know the actor I know the action happening now and I know the thing that received the action so again co-worker is the person you work with the person you share in office with your team member 13 member so these are active voice sentences so when we want the actor to be the focus we know the actor we can share that information we use active voice in English we like to use the active voice a lot because it sounds very clear in English we like to say everything clearly we usually don't try to hide anything unless there's something strange in the situation we'll talk about that in a moment great some more examples are coming in my coworker is punching my teeth what's grammatically correct but a very interesting situation I cannot imagine on Facebook a person stole everything from the store whoa okay math Matea says my co-worker is copying my project whoa my coworker is doing my work yeah when YouTube says you have very bad coworkers you guys are funny examples today that's nice someone else said my dog is eating my cat you guys have very very interesting examples very interesting okay this is very interesting great you guys have nice examples everybody has nice examples active voice sounds good so we're going to go to passive voice in part two of today's lesson and then we will talk about how to choose so when to use these for now let's take a short break for today's lesson I thought it would be good I want to introduce these two PDFs these are both I talked about the business one from time to time this one is a school one ooh thanks for the zoom this one is a school PDF this has phrases for class phrases for class here on the back the business one has phrases for a business meeting I thought these two would be very nice to pair with this lesson today because these are both situations in which choosing between active and passive can help you sound like making the correct choice between active and passive can help you to sound more confident or more sure about what you want to say so if you would like to download these they are free you can find them from the link below the video on youtube or above the video on Facebook so these are the business and school PDFs but there are lots of others I'll show you maybe a couple more leader all right great with that let's continue then to passive voice now we talked about active voice if you missed it don't worry this lesson is being recorded let's talk about passive now what is passive if you're just joining to you don't forget to like and share the video so others can find today's lesson okay so passive now let's discuss passive I will go over here so passive voice in passive voice then different from active voice the person or thing receiving the action is the focus so in active voice the person doing the action the actor was the focus of our sentence in this case with passive however the thing or the person receiving some action is our focus so this is long there's a lot of information here but this is a key to understanding passive voice when we should use it passive voice is used when we do not know the person or thing doing the action so I don't know who did something I see the result or I know the result so I can describe that with passive voice I don't know who did it but I know something happened I use passive voice to express that so that's one that's one situation when we don't know the person or the thing doing the action second when the person or the thing doing the action is not important not important so maybe I know the person or the thing who did something but it's not important to my conversation now what's important is the result I want to focus on the results this is the second case where we use passive voice a lot finally or a third reason when we want to emphasize the thing receiving the action so emphasized means to make something stronger like we want the thing receiving the action to have like stronger meaning in our sentence there are a lot of reasons we might want to do this I will talk about this point more in part three of today's lesson so these are the three cases or three kind of general guides for when to use the passive okay so to make the passive form to make a passive statement we use the verb to be to be and we change the verb to be to match the tenth of our sentence so we don't change our verb to past tense we change to be so we use was for example and then we use the past participle form of the verb with was with was in cases like these so I'll show you a few different examples of how we can make the passive with a couple of like kind of changed sentences from the first part of our lesson so first one in the beginning of today's lesson we talked about this one I finished sorry sorry thank you we've talked about this sentence I finished my report I finished my report to make this sentence passive then we use my report was finished my report was finished hmm so here there's no information about the actor so who finished my report we don't know it's not important for some reason my emphasis in this sentence is just my report was finished so here my subject is my report so this is the thing receiving the action so to express that I use my report was Mike to beaver and then past participle finished my report was finished my report was finished a slightly more advanced point some of you have asked about this we sometimes use get instead of B in sentences like these so for example my report got finished when you use the verb get here it communicates something unexpected so like a surprise and so we can use get in these passive sentences for example my report got finished it sounds like I'm surprised I'm not I don't expect my report was finished like that's a surprise to me to communicate that I say my report got finished so what happened my report got finished what so that sounds like something kind of surprising ok let's continue to the next one so let's change our first one to passive us lots of you in the chat already sent this answer but that man stole my bag was our active voice sentence but to make this passive my bag was stolen my bag was stolen so again who is the actor here we don't know in this case or it's not important I use to be in the past was was this is something that is finished it's done stolen is the past participle form of steel steel so an active voice we used simple past tense that man stole my bag that man stole my bag to make it a passive sentence we use was stolen past participle form of the verb steal my bag was stolen so in this case I don't know who stole my bag or maybe for some reason it's not important who stole my bag so you might use this sentence if you're at a coffee shop and maybe you realize your bag is gone you could say well my bag was stolen this is another case this is a great example of a case where you can use got my bag got stolen very unexpected so my bag got stolen we can use it here okay sorry I haven't checked the chat in a while someone says is it correct if I say my report was done I guess you could but it sounds a little not quite so clear this is getting into a little bit of the differences between like a status word done and an action word done so I would say my report was finished just to be a little more clear okay my little dog was stolen oh dear oh dear okay uh other examples why not my bag was stolen by that man says Humvee air you can use that yeah my bag was stolen by that man that's fine it's grammatically correct so I think I saw a couple of you sending sentences that use by someone someone someone so my report was finished by me yeah sure you can use that if if you want to include the actor that's fine you can if you don't know the actor this is how you might say it so yes it's correct it's fine to do that if you want but there are some situations where you just don't know the actor or you to hide the actor or something so yes it is fine to do that my house was built in one year very very nice very nice my wallet was stolen good good is it okay to use to past tense in one sentence yes that's fine my phone was stolen good good good uh my car okay okay lots of people having things stolen okay let's move on to the last example though my lunch is being eaten my lunch is being eaten so here we have the passive form of this my coworker is eating my lunch sentence my coworker is eating my lunch sentence here my lunch is being eaten so yes we can say my lunch is being eaten by my coworker you can say that but in some cases we don't want to maybe our coworker can hear us like if like Eric is eating my lunch I just sorry Eric we don't want to say like my lunch is being eaten by Eric because Eric might hear me and realize I can see him sorry arctas so we might not choose we might choose not to use by someone here but let's break this down my lunch my lunch is our focus here so this is our subject yeah my lunch is being is being so I have to use the be verb here in this case we're using the progressive form just as we did over here we're using the progressive eating here when we make it passive though we need to change our beaver my lunch is being this means happening now is being and eaten is my past participle verb the past participle of the verb eat my lunch is being eaten sadly so my lunch is being eaten by my coworker my lunch is being eaten by Eric whatever lots of people are having things stolen into chat okay so stolen is good and I think so again if you want to hide the actor or you do not know the actor you can use passive to do that some other examples that are not about having things stolen my console is being fixed nice one Fernando okay [Music] some trees are being planted says C Homme very nice my chicken was stolen but what's interesting lots of things being stolen my homework is being dropped oh no like physically dropped your homework okay other examples other examples what means focus focus focus means the thing we want to put our attention on so we need to that's like the most important thing in the sentence so is the person or thing receiving the action that's the focus of our sentence my book was torn my lunch was stolen okay lots of things being stolen let's take one more short break and then we'll talk about how to choose how do you choose active voice or passive voice I've given you many hints but we'll talk more about this so I want to share a couple more of these PDFs that I think could match with today's lesson this is the travel this is travel to the USA one yes but mm-hmm on the back again there is hard to see there's this question part should I would run around there but I I'll knock something over oh yes this question part asking questions so these are like answers a lot of answers to common travel questions yes but you might use or you might hear rather passive and active sentences to respond to so if you're traveling maybe this is another good one to pick up this is the travel PDF and then I showed you the business and the school ones earlier there are a couple more just some things to think about shopping as well there are lots of verb on the back of this shopping one too but um so you can practice your active and passive sentences with those all right let's go on to the last part of today's lesson then how to choose how to choose so how do we choose how do we decide should I use active voice should I use passive voice I don't know so first what is your focus think about your sentence what is your focus do you want it so again focus the most important part of your sentence what's the most important thing in your sentence is it the person or the thing acting is it the person doing some action is that your focus is that the most important thing probably you should choose the active voice probably active voice or is your focus is the most important thing the person or the thing receiving the action so something happened to something else in that case maybe you should use the passive voice or maybe do do you know the actor so if you if you don't know the actor or if you want to hide the actor you can use passive so hide hide again means like to make something secret like you don't want to share something to hide the actor so why would you want to hide the actor this is something I haven't talked about today can we move down just a little bit so I'll show you a couple examples of situations where you may want to hide the person acting this is usually because you did something bad or someone is in trouble for example your computer was broken your computer was broken so you leave your house and you come back and you leave your office and you come back and someone says your computer was broken so here this is passive voice your computer is our focus yeah was broken so broken is the past participle form of the verb break your computer was broken you might think what why who broke my computer what happened this is a situation where there's some trouble so you want to hide the actor maybe the speaker broke the computer and doesn't want to explain you use passive voice but please keep in mind like in this case you're going to get lots of questions like who broke the computer what happened so expect follow-up passive voice is not like a way to keep you safe if you get in trouble it's a way to try to hide sometimes if you get in trouble but it will not keep you safe okay hey Monday blue thanks for joining okay second example the customer was taken care of the customer was taken care of so what's this this is not a situation where there's trouble necessarily maybe there's not trouble this is an example of like a company situation so in many organizations companies whatever big groups of people working together in these cases sometimes it's not important to say which employee did something we don't need to say specifically Alicia did this Eric did that Devin did that we don't say specifically who but we need to know that something happened this is another case where we might use passive so the customer was taken care of so to take care of something means like to do what is necessary or to help someone this case so here who took care of the customer it's not important maybe Alicia did it maybe Devon did it maybe Eric did it but we don't need to know that the most important thing in this message is the customer was helped the customer was taken care of so our focus is the customer so this is an example where it's not so important maybe to say who did it but we want to focus on the action being completed so this is a simple guide to how to choose between active and passive generally if you in English if you know the actor it's better to say it in many cases there are also times when passive will sound a little bit more polite like in a job interview setting for example what time will the interview be held it's like hmm I don't know who's going to hold the interview so I use passive voice to ask my question so there are a couple of situations like that where you don't know the person or you're not sure about the actor so you can use passive voice to get around that so we have to someone shouted in all caps can I say my computer is broken instead of was broken yes you can but the nuance of your sentence changes my computer is broken is a status as a condition my computer is broken if you want to say my computer was broken sounds like someone did it someone did that so is broken we don't have that feeling okay I have to finish because I'm late as usual let's end there so thank you very much to everyone who joined us next week we are going to be back yeah we're gonna talk about this how to give your opinion and connect your ideas so lots of you well some of you have asked recently about how to make like longer sentences and like putting your ideas together so I'm gonna talk about and then and so on and after that like how to connect your ideas and show your ideas share your opinions a bit more smoothly so please join us next week July 25th Wednesday 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time that is New York City time please google it to find your local time if you don't know what time that is if you missed this lesson yes it will be recorded it will be available on YouTube and Facebook very soon if you're watching on Instagram please check the full video on YouTube or Facebook so we'll finish there thank you very much to everybody who joined and thank you for your very funny example sentences don't forget to grab download your free stuff from the link below the video there's lots of new things actually that maybe I haven't printed out I should print out some new ones so check out all the new stuff I need to check the new stuff there's a lot of them so please join us next week thanks for liking and sharing the video enjoy the rest of your week enjoy your weekend and I will see you again soon bye bye

Channel: Learn English with EnglishClass101.com

Views: 61,307

Keywords: active voice, passive voice, active verbs, passive verbs, active and passive verb forms, basic english grammar, englishclass101.com, englishclass101, learn english, easy, fast, longplay, compilation, fun, simple, learn while you sleep, english exposure, english immersion, get better at english, live, livestream, tv, english tv, american english, british english

Id: zwXPSALiEAE

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 17 2019