Intermediate English - Passive Voice

all right hello hello everybody and welcome to our lesson today my name's chris nice to meet you or nice to see you again to the people who i uh who i see on here and who i know right when we when we see someone who we know when we see a person we know we don't say nice to meet you all right nice to meet you nice to meet you is when we just meet someone for the first time nice to meet you is when we meet someone the first time only the first time yes right now we are having a meeting right we are meeting in the same place we are meeting on zoom but [Music] i know everyone here amira aisha i know these people this means that i don't say nice to meet you instead i say nice to see you nice to see you again nice to see you it's great to see you it's good to see you these are the phrases that we usually say uh so nice to meet you is only the first time great so every friday at 8 a.m new york time we go live on youtube and every monday at 8 a.m new york time we go live on facebook today's friday we're on youtube and today we're talking about passive voice it's a big difficult topic so we have a lot to talk about and first we should we should understand what does voice mean in grammar right of course we know what a voice usually is you can hear my voice it's how i speak right the way of speaking that comes out of one person's mouth this is their voice uh the sounds that that a person makes their voice we can also say that voice means your ideas your opinions the things that you believe because we can say that we want people to hear our voice and it's not only the sound it's the idea that we that we have we want them to hear this and understand it so sometimes we say voice like opinion right or if we're talking about um elections in the government choosing a new president for example people vote for the president and we can say that this is their voice the voice of the people the decision of the people what what they want what they think right so but in grammar it means something different we have active voice and we have passive voice active voice and passive voice active voice is what we usually say we usually speak with active voice we don't usually speak with passive voice there are some special situations when we speak with passive voice and we'll talk about that today but usually we speak with active voice what does this mean well in active voice usually we say subject verb object i see you you see me right this is how we usually speak i subject see verb you object you subject see verb me object this is how we usually speak i see you you see me i learn i study languages i teach people right this is how we usually speak in english this is active voice active voice starts with the subject this is how we can think about it it starts with the person or the thing that does something so if he does something in the sentence then i start with he goes to the cinema every month right he goes person who does the thing we usually start with this uh this is the subject in passive voice it's the opposite in passive voice we go object verb and then maybe subject and then maybe maybe we have a subject maybe we don't have to have a subject and if we have the subject of passive voice we usually say bye right by this person so let me give you an example active voice we could say the girl walked the dog she walked the dog outside right the girl walked the dog in passive voice we say the dog was walked and if we want to if we need to we can say by the girl right so it's very different in active voice the girl walked the dog the girl is the beginning of the sentence and the girl is and we focus on the beginning of the sentence we focus on the girl doing this action but in passive voice we start with the object so we focus on the object and so we focus on the dog the dog was walked and now the subject is not important so when do we use this don't worry we will talk about this a lot more um when when do we use this we use this in a few different situations first uh we don't know we don't know who or what this subject is we don't know who or what the subject is for example the bank was robbed somebody took the money from the bank the bank was robbed we don't know who did it so we can use passive voice because we just focus on the object not who did it uh we also can use passive voice when the subject is not important right the subject's not important in context it's not important in this situation so a good example of this is i was born in 1986 i don't need to tell you by my mother right uh it's not important for me to say this information when i tell you the year that i'm born but uh of course of course it is important that my mother bore me gave birth to me but when i'm telling somebody the year that i'm born it's not important for me to include this information right um these are the two main reasons why we use a passive voice and the last the last reason we just we don't want uh we don't want to say who or what the subject is we don't we don't want to say who or what the subject is um like you are walking down the street with a bag of money and the police say hey where did you get that bag of money and you say it was given to me it was given to me somebody gave it to me but i don't but i'm not saying who right so sometimes um an english speaker might use passive voice to say that they don't want to tell some information oh where did you get that uh where did you get that necklace it was a gift it was given to me right it's not important or i don't want to say who gave it to me but somebody gave it to me so these are some usual reasons why why we use passive voice to change active voice to passive voice there are three steps um so first of all what is passive voice passive voice is really the verb to be plus the third form of the main verb this is also called the past participle so we have the verb to be and we have this third form of the verb that we call past participle right like the verb to eat eat ate eaten eaten the third form is called the past participle uh so when we make passive voice we use the verb to be and then we use this form of the main verb so um what happened to my cake where's my cake what happened it was eaten it was eaten somebody ate the cake somebody ate it it was eaten right so but but uh now let's think about everything that we have learned about verbs we learned about present simple present present simple present continuous present perfect past simple past continuous past we learned all these things right and we learned how to make them and you know the verb to do like in present simple i do present continuous i'm doing these are things that we already learned but all of those things that we learned can be active voice and passive voice and probably what we what we've talked about in our in our lessons and probably what you learn mostly is about active voice when we say i do i am doing this is present simple and present continuous of active voice if we want to change this to passive voice our verb is to do still right and this is our main verb so we just need the third form do did done right so done and present simple we need to change the verb to be in present simple so i am or it is for example i i can't do my homework i ask my friend to do my homework my friend helps me my friend does my homework my mom says oh your homework is is finished it's it's great and uh how did you do it i don't know but uh it is done right it is done or i could use uh present perfect it has been done so we change the verb to be to present perfect the verb to be we change to present perfect have been or has been and then the main verb we just used the third part done has been done past simple i did that's active voice right i did past simple i did this is active voice and passive voice it was done it was done so how do so there's three steps that we need to do here so let's let's look at another example we have active voice if active voice uh let's say people watch tv people watch tv this is active voice what do we have here we have subject verb object right the first step we need to chain we need to put the object at the beginning of the sentence object at the beginning so we put tv okay step two we change the verb to be to the correct verb tense right so people watch this is present simple this is present simple people watch present simple so we change the verb to be to present simple tv is it is to be present simple it is so tv tv is and then we need the third form of the main verb the main verb is to watch the third form watched tv is watched and we could say buy people tv is watched by people now you might think well when can i really say this phrase if we're talking about statistics tv is watched by five million people every second maybe so we could talk about this information right in general um we could say tv is watched too much during meals or tv should not be watched during meals right so when we're using to be in the third form this is passive voice this is one way this is the way to make passive voice and it also has other meanings but great so let's let's use some more examples here i'm going to write an example in active voice and i want you to change it to passive voice okay remember that we have three steps step number one we move the object to the beginning step number two we change the verb to be to the same tense as the verb in the active sentence so watch you people watch this is present simple so to be present simple tv is and the third step is we need the third form of the main verb so here it's watch and the third form is watched all right next example women buy shoes women buy shoes uh gigi can you change this one to passive voice um choose is bot okay choose this is more than one shoe shoes are are bought yeah by human if i want to say by by women by humans it's too much in that case okay yeah exactly good job good job okay next the next example the next challenge will be for colleen uh okay um someone robbed the bank uh the bank was robbed yeah the bank was robbed the bank was robbed exactly uh nirvana next okay the next example is uh we ate lunch they last was eating the lunch was eating yeah lunch was eaten great um okay aida let's see aida they've opened a new shop a new shop has been excellent perfect has been opened yeah a new shop has been opened because we use present perfect here in passive voice we must use present perfect great all right next scifl um okay uh i'll pay you tomorrow i will pay you tomorrow tomorrow uh tomorrow is tomorrow the object uh p p object hey is the verb tomorrow object no no uh you you is the object right you uh uh confuse confuse you no problem uh yeah so tomorrow what what what verb tense is this i will pay what is this but i will pay is this is this past or present or future future future yeah and it's future simple um so step one we need to put the object at the beginning step two we need to change the verb to be to this verb tense this is future simple so we need to change the verb to be to future simple what what is to be in future simple um uh but i know i'm going to okay this i'm going to is also future right um what about the verb to do how do you say this in the future i i to do i bane i will do i i will do what about the verb to run uh you run i will run you will run i will do i will see i will jump i will think i will live and i will i i will pay okay so let's wait just uh so cycle every verb like to do if i do it now i say i am doing or i do right no in the past what do we say in the past uh i i i hit i hit done i have done this this is uh present perfect in the past we say i did i did yes i did and in the future we say um i do i will do i will do or i'm going to do right so the verb to do in the future we say i will do the verb to run the verb to run we say i will run the verb to jump what do you think in the future i will jump okay the verb to sing in the future i will see okay and the verb to be in the future i will to be i will be i will be i will be so this is the future form of the verb to be so step one we need to move object to the beginning step two change the verb to be to this verb tense future simple so what is it i i uh you will be you will be good you will be and be in the third form of this verb you will be paid by me tomorrow yes exactly exactly exactly or if we don't want to say who will pay you will be paid you will be paid somebody will pay you yeah okay great a little bit confused it was because yeah it was because uh future future home yeah first time that we tried with future uh-huh uh great okay amira uh another example um [Music] they took our passports they took our passports however i thought yes by them if we know if we know who they are by them but uh maybe we don't know our passports were taken the the police say okay show me your passports i don't have a passport it was taken yeah great and aisha um uh okay we had never we had never ordered it before so what's the objective it's it had been i've never been i never been then before it had never been ordered before exactly i'll give you an example for example i one time i went to this restaurant with these uh very rich guys from germany and they ordered the most expensive things on the menu and the restaurant panicked because these things had never been ordered before they had never been ordered before nobody no people ever came there and ordered this right so we can use passive voice to say that we don't know who ordered or it's not important but no person ever ordered this before right great okay so it's passive voice is very difficult i think you can see this you can understand that it can it can be difficult because there's a lot of words for example the builders the builders have been building the building the builders have been building the building this is active voice right it's a strange sentence in english because you can use the same words again and again um right the builders the people who build have been building this is a verb they started in the past they build and build and build and until now they continue to build right this is present perfect continuous the builders have been building the building the house the structure now we need to change this to passive voice what's the object anybody you can turn your microphone on if you know the answer the building is the object yeah so the building which verb tense is it uh [Music] uh present perfect continuous exactly present perfect continuous so we need to change the verb to be the present perfect continuous has been building now has been has been being built something like this good the job has been being built built by the builders good perfect yeah so let's just quickly go through it again so everyone can get it um the building is the object has been being has been being this is the verb to be in present perfect continuous right like the verb to build have been building the verb to do has been doing the verb to jump has been jumping the verb to be has been being the same as all other verbs right so the building has been being and we need the third form of the main verb the main verb is to build third form is built the building has been being built by the builders welcome to english great okay so sometimes sometimes we also use passive voice not sometimes very often we use passive voice in newspapers in articles for for newspapers and journals and magazines um because passive voice lets us do something special it lets us separate this information from the subject right so if you are a journalist and you are writing an article for a newspaper and somebody told you this information but you don't want to say their name then you will say it is said it is said that right this means somebody said this and we don't say who it is we can use this with many verbs um to think it is thought that and then we can say this information and we don't say who thinks it we can say it is believed that right or maybe i don't maybe i don't want to say this is um sorry this is uh this is present simple it is said in passive voice present simple so this means that right now in general people say this right right now people say this what if i want to say that in the past people have said this before we can say it has been said it has been said that right and this so so this is present perfect now and this is not only people say this now but people have said this before right great so what is something that uh has been said can you think of something that people said in the past or or people sometimes say for example it is said that you should wear warm clothes when it is cold outside right people say this people say these words people say give this advice right so this is what it means it is said and when i say it is said what does this do it tells it tells the person who's listening it's not me who says this somebody says this so i can say this information and it's not me who says it just oh it's it's said people say it right so we can take away the responsibility of saying this because there's no subject so great um let's see first of all let's answer two questions uh first of all let's think of something that has been said before something that where we can use this phrase it is said or it has been said but first when were you born which month which month were you born i was born in 1986. uh sorry you don't have to tell me your age but uh i was born in september i was born in september gigi what about you oh i'm happy because i was born in october not age yeah okay october yes great do you think people who are born in autumn are different oh no i don't think so i think uh doesn't have any connection about month okay no but in uh in brazil october is this summer or winter or almost summer almost summer yeah almost summer yeah it's spring yeah okay great nirvana what about you when were you born i'm born in february i i was i was born in february yeah i was born it happened in the past right yes yeah because if we say if we say i am born this means this happens every day right like every day like have you seen the film groundhog day where every day is the same the same day again and again um it's a it's a famous comedy american comedy uh yeah so if we say i am born this means every day i am born again and again and again if we say i am i am worked this means that something or somebody works me i am worked every day right if we say i am seen then somebody sees me every day for example if we say i am i am followed by 80 000 people on instagram right so people follow me every day this is what this means i to be followed and to follow to be worked or to work to be seen or to see so in passive voice we also have infinitives we also have this so right we can say to do or to be done to make to be made so what's the difference i see stifles giving me the look like what's the difference uh the difference to make and to be made so for example i make a cake the cake is made by me so to be made this is about the cake something happens to this cake it is made every time that i make it right uh [Music] so the same with with other verbs we can have uh an active voice infinitive and the passive voice infinitive and again this just tells us about the subject and the object but stifle what month were you born i was born in julie july yeah you lie in july uh-huh yeah and is that summer or winter in your country um um the weather in my country uh usually in my country have to either ring and uh summer because my country because my country located uh uh at uh ecuador ecuador on the equator yeah yes yeah it's on the equator yeah uh so you said you have two seasons rainy season and summer yes i only have two seasons because uh in my country tropica tropica yeah tropical climate yeah tropical climate yeah um so in july is that rainy season or is that summer raining rainy season fishing not go to sea to catch the fish because yeah because it's so dangerous you know have a big whiff yeah yeah okay great thank you oh my place here uh nirvana what about you what month were you born oh you already told us sorry um what about you what month were you born uh [Music] december you know um for many one one of my brothers is born was born in december and uh every birthday people give him a present for our december holidays and for his birthday the same time so he it's it's like he doesn't ha he doesn't get another special day another holiday it's his birthday is with christmas usually um i know you have other december holidays like uh ramadan or another maybe i'm wrong does this happen in your in does this happen with you that people give one present for birthday and for december holidays uh-huh and so that you celebrate them at the same time aisha what about you when was your birthday i was born in maine in may yeah um usually it is summer it's the first month in the summer in my country do you think there's any difference about which season someone is born in does this change their character i think uh i think because uh i am the only member who was born in summer so i uh [Music] i uh they told me that i am more quiet and more tolerant more tolerant yeah my mom said because you are born in uh hot with her so you you are very quiet and eternal because normally uh the small baby when nabora and this this one they are because we have uh hot and they need to van or anything like that but may not and i don't care care about the hot weather as in the cold weather okay but you prefer warm weather right yes i prefer warm water and i can work long time in warm water but i can't i couldn't stay in the window yeah all right did we ask everyone i think colleen what about you i don't think we spoke with you when is your birthday uh i was born in may in may yeah okay we have a lot of may babies here it was a good month so um what about you do you believe in horoscopes do you think the month of the year or the sign is important well i don't believe in horoscopes but sometimes very seldom i read it because for fun it's only this is the only reason uh-huh just for fun yes but some but if it's good information then maybe you might start to believe oh they say the information are so general that i think they fit to everyone that's what makes it true right yes yes yes it's very possible to meet the friend that day i don't know you'll need a friend on that day for example yeah that's a that's a good example too um yeah what maybe when we're when we are talking about horoscopes it's another situation when someone might use passive voice because like um or or when we're or when we're giving directions about something that will happen in the future right when we talk about something that will happen in the future we can use passive voice for example maybe i'm flying to paris my friend cannot meet me at the airport but he will be responsible so someone will meet me at the airport he tells me chris you will be met at the airport you will be met by someone you will be met by someone from our company you will be met by a person holding a sign at the airport for example and when we talk about horoscopes they might say the same thing uh you will be invited to an interesting event or right we might use some constructions like this great okay i know that we talked about a very difficult topic today uh passive voice is it's very difficult and so if do you have any other questions um about this topic or about something else questions that you'd like to ask today uh yes chris can we say it was said yeah because uh okay and remember this is because it's past simple it's all the same rules as past simple so this situation is completely finished uh it's not connected to now for some reason right like maybe we're talking about the famous trial at court and we say during the trial it was said that right and then they say what happened during the trial okay thank you [Music] yeah good question other questions so one question that people usually have is about um when we should use reported speech and when we should use passive voice they both have lots of rules and it's hard to remember them sometimes and sometimes in the example that we just talked about newspapers and different things that we publish articles for example and horoscopes sometimes it can be confusing uh so for example there was a trial the man said that he is not guilty and five other people said that he's not guilty it was said that he was not guilty by these people but also we can say he said that he was not guilty they said that he was not guilty this is reported speech so it's a little different because reported speech can still be active or passive voice right so usually reported speech is going to be active voice he said it's still subject and then verb right another thing that a lot of people ask me about is hey chris why when i type in google docs or microsoft word why does it tell me that when i use passive voice it's a mistake it does a lot it will tell you that this is not uh the best way to write this sentence for example it's because usually we only we don't usually we don't use passive voice it's a special construction that it's only used sometimes so you should not tr you should not really try to speak with passive voice and you should also remember that passive voice is mostly used in writing it will sound strange if we speak with passive voice a lot great let's see another reason that we use passive voice is when we talk about films we already talked we already talked about films and and um we'll come we'll speak a little bit more about films and passive voice when we do our review but uh for example the film was shot in buenos aires in buenos aires the the main character was played by leonardo dicaprio right these are passive voice sentences basically when you see by you you can almost be sure that this sentence is uh passive voice right when we say bye and then we say the person who did it this is usually going to be passive voice we also say this about famous achievements or famous works of art the mona lisa was painted by leonardo da vinci right was painted if we want to talk about leonardo da vinci we can say leonardo da vinci painted the mona lisa and this and this and this and this right but if we want to focus on the mona lisa then we say the mona lisa was painted by leonardo da vinci aida you have another question yes sorry i forgot advertisement is it british english english or american english advertisement advertisement yeah great question so i'll i promise i'll answer very fast uh ad is short this is american english advert is short and this is british english then we have advertisement advertisement and we have advertisement this is american english and this is british english so just to tell you again the answer advertisement american english there's two stresses there's a main stress and a soft stress there's advertisement and in british english there's one it's advertisement advertisement thank you because one teacher i won't uh say who told the vice versa that's why i'm confused okay thank you thank you yeah no problem but and also remember that uh today english is more and more and more global so these are not rules these are just statistics that are changing right uh great okay insightful uh so how to use brass round off round off the phrasal verb to round off it's usually a transitive verb it usually has an object to round something off to round something off this usually me this means that we make something round we make something round so this might have two different meanings right we have round like a shape like a circle round but round can also be for example the number two the number three the number four the number five the number six these are round numbers and something like 2.1 right 2.1745 this is not a round number do you understand is decimal yeah exactly so if we if i have an object like i have this marker and i want to make it round then maybe i can use a tool and change it and it will be round right i could round off the end of the marker but if i'm talking about numbers maybe maybe we have an average of many numbers and we get a number like this well if i round this number then it will be 2. right yeah yeah i know uh like uh like fraction is not uh round number fraction right just uh yeah right fractions uh so uh i don't know how to create the example also do the example for this would to round something off uh for example get an average of these 10 numbers and round off the answer oh maybe something like this we can also we can also round up and round down for example when we talk about numbers for example we have 2.174 it's less than 2.5 so we round down to two but if it's two if it's two point nine seven four five then we round up to three um yeah yeah so to round up and to round down uh if we round off uh it will be 2.97 you could you could round to the second decimal place yes you can do that but usually when we talk about a round number we're talking about a whole number so this is two or three or four not a decimal not a fraction okay so i understand now yeah great great questions all right well um are there any other questions for today okay thank you everybody for coming to this lesson aisha saiful gigi aida nirvana and amira thank you so much every friday we go live at 8 a.m new york time on youtube and every monday we go live at 8 a.m new york time on facebook so have a great weekend and i will see everybody on monday 8 am new york time on facebook

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

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Id: DgrxF_10tkw

Length: 62min 35sec (3755 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021