Hello, I'm Gill at www.engvid.com , and today's
lesson is on the active voice and the passive voice, and this is in response to a request
that someone left on the YouTube comments to explain the difference and why do we use
active or passive, okay? So, here is an explanation. So, normally, it's best to use the active
voice. It's easier, and it tells you more. It tells you who did the action, if you use
the active. If you start using the passive, it can become
a little bit complicated how to put the words together, so the active voice is "The boy
kicked the ball.". So, "kicked" is the verb, "the boy" is the
subject, because he did the action, he did the kicking, and the ball receives the action,
so the ball is the object, so we've got subject, verb, object. A simple, active sentence, okay? So, you know who did the action and you know
also something that received the action. So, if you turn that into the passive, it
sounds a little bit strange. You wouldn't, normally. Well, there might be a reason, but I'll give
you that in a minute. So, if you change it to passive, you make
the object the subject of the sentence. You start with the ball as the subject. It's all about the ball now, what happened
to the ball? "The ball was kicked." The ball was kicked, and you could add, you
can add "by the boy", the boy did the kicking, "The ball was kicked by the boy.", or you
can just say "The ball was kicked." One reason why you might say it that way is
if a ball is kicked by somebody and it breaks a window and you don't know who kicked it,
then that's all you can say. You could say "Somebody kicked the ball.",
so "somebody" would become the subject, but you could also turn it into the passive and
say "The ball was kicked and it broke the window, it hit the window and broke it.",
so that's sometimes a reason for using passive, because you don't know, sometimes we don't
know who did the action, so you can't say who did it, so you may have to use passive
because of that. Or, maybe you - perhaps you do know who did
it, but you don't want to say. Again, you don't want to get somebody into
trouble. It could be something like that. You don't want to say who did it, or sometimes
it's just not important for that piece of information, it may not be important who did
it, okay? So, the main thing is that the - with the
active voice, the agent of the verb, the person who does the action, here is "the boy", and
the recipient, so the agent is the subject and the recipient of the action is the object
in the active sentence, okay? But then, that changes in the passive. So, let's just look at some more - that's
a strange example, really, but let's look at some quite normal examples of how the passive
is often used, okay? So, if you order something on the internet,
you might get a confirmation to say "We've received your order, we've received your payment,
we are going to deliver your order, we are sending it.", but they might put it this way:
Your order will be sent by standard delivery, for example. They could say "We will send your order",
but very often, they use this passive form, "Your order will be sent", that's just the
sort of style that is often used when you're ordering things that way. So, that's passive. These are all passive examples. Your order will be sent, okay? Another one, if you're looking at a house
and it might be old or, this isn't very old, but it could be much older, but you're not
particularly interested in who the builder was at the time, but you want to know - you're
interested to know how old is the house, when was it built, so: This house was built in
1960. So, it would be very unusual to know, going
back so far in time, the name of the - well, it wouldn't just be one builder, it would
be lots of builders, so maybe a company name or something like that, a building firm - but
it would be unusual to know so far back in the past, what company of builders built the
house and also, that's not your main concern. This is where it's not so important, you just
want to know when the house was built and how old it is, so "This house was built in
1960", and that gives you the information you want to know. Okay, right. So, then another example, somebody has lost
his car. You say: His car has been stolen. He left it parked in the street and, overnight,
it has disappeared. It looks as if it has been stolen, so in this
kind of, you know, a crime has been committed, probably, somebody has taken his car, but
some - it's very unlikely that you would know who did it. The main issue here is that his car has been
stolen and he needs to do something about it. He needs to report it to the police, to his
insurance company, etc. So, of course, it is important in one way
to know who did that, you would like to know to be able to punish the person who did it,
but in the immediate, you know, moment of finding the car has gone, the main thing is
to know that the car has been stolen. That's the main important point. Okay. So, you don't - you can't say who stole it,
because you don't know, okay. Right. So, then, with the book, if you have a book
that you're reading, "The book was published last year.", okay? So, you might want to say the name of the
publisher, but normally, you might want to know how old is this book, so that's the main
point you want to get across or to know, oh, it was published last year. It's a very recent book, it's a new novel
or something like that. So, it was published last year. So, it's quite a recent book. That's the main thing. You're not too bothered about who the publisher
was. You might be interested to know who the author
is, but that name will be on the cover, so that's fine. But, just to say that it was published very
recently, "was published" is passive, okay? Somebody published it, but you're not saying
who. Right. And then, another very familiar set of wording:
In the exam, you will be tested on... okay, on spelling and grammar, whatever it is, on
your fluency in English, anything like that. They could say "We will test you on", if,
in the exam, "We will test you on", that would be the active form, but here, quite often,
with exam information, it's put in the passive to be less sort of personal, a little bit
more distant. There's a kind of distance, really, with the
passive voice. So, "In the exam, you will be tested on ..." is
passive. And then, finally, in this half of the lesson,
somebody is going to a party and they ask you "Are you going to Jack's party?", and,
oh, you say, party? Oh, ah, "I haven't been invited to the party". You're not sort of saying "Oh Jack, Jack,
he hasn't invited me! Ah!" So, you feel a bit, you know, you don't really
want to say, because you don't want to sound as if you're angry with Jack for not inviting
you, but "haven't been invited", you're sort of keeping a distance from the situation and
saying "Well, no, I'm not going, actually, because I haven't been invited, so, you know,
I have other things to do anyway, so that's alright.", and you sort of tactfully reply. So, to use the passive there is a sort of
tactful - if you're trying to be tactful, diplomatic - then you might you use the passive,
again, because you don't want to say, you don't want to give a name of who. Who was it, who didn't invite you, sometimes
it's somebody who doesn't do something, just as much as someone who does do something. So, it works both ways. Okay, so I hope that that gives you some useful
examples of how the active and the passive are different, and we'll just move onto the
second part of the lesson now, where I have a little test for you. Okay, so let's do a little test, and here
I've written some sentences which are active sentences and I'd like you to try to put them
into the passive, okay? So, let's just run through them first: Someone
asked me to repair the window. That's the broken window that the ball hit. The chef told us to clean the kitchen before
starting to cook. Active. "The chef" is the subject. Jack didn't invite me to his party. The artist created this sculpture in 1950. The marketing firm paid me to hand out leaflets
in the street. I'll explain some of the vocabulary as well
as we go through, don't worry if there's a word you don't know. So, the milliner, that's someone who makes
hats, made this hat last year, and Someone asked me to explain active and passive verbs. Okay, so those are all active sentences. Let's now change them to passive. So, first of all, "Someone asked me to repair",
or fix, "the window.", the broken window. So, how do you turn that into passive? So, I'm the object here, someone asked me,
so we have to change "me" to the subject. So, "me" in the subject is "I", okay? So, we have to take away "someone" and say
"I" and then it's past tense, so "I was asked", take out "me", and there we have it. This is now the passive: I was asked, without
saying who did the asking, I was asked to repair the window. So, now that's passive. Right. So, then, the chef, the guy, usually a man,
in charge of a big kitchen, a restaurant kitchen or a big industrial kitchen, "The chef told
us to clean the kitchen before starting to cook." So, "The chef told us", here, we are the object,
but we need to change "us" to the subject, so just like "me" to "I", it goes "us" to
"we", okay? So, "We", and its past tense again, so we
need "We were told - We were told to clean the kitchen before starting to cook.", okay? That's now passive. Next one, here's Jack again with his party. Jack didn't invite me to his party. So, how do you say that without mentioning
Jack's name? So, "me" is the object again, we have to turn
"me" into the subject, just like here. So, "I was", and if we follow the abbreviated
form here, "I wasn't", "I wasn't invited to -" oh, then we can mention Jack, if you like,
"to the party", or "to Jack's party". You can choose whether to mention Jack or
not. So, "I wasn't invited to Jack's party.", or
"to the party", that is now passive, okay? Right. Then, "The artist", subject, "created this
sculpture", a sort of stone or metal sculpture in an art gallery, three-dimensional piece
work of art, "in 1950". So, this sculpture is the object here, we
need to turn it into the subject. So, we need to begin the sentence "This sculpture",
take out "the artist", "This sculpture was created in 1950." This sculpture was created in 1950, and now
that's passive, okay? And the sculpture is the subject rather than
the artist. Next one: The marketing firm paid me to hand
out leaflets - advertising pieces of paper with adverts on - in the street. So, a publicity company, marketing, an advertising
company, paid me some money to hand out leaflets to people in the street, okay? So, "me", I'm the object here, and again,
like this up here, we need to make "me" the subject, so "I", take out "the marketing firm",
"I", and again, "was", "I was paid - I was paid to hand out leaflets in the street." And now that's passive, okay. Right. Next one: The milliner, the hat maker, The
milliner made this hat last year. So, "the milliner" is the subject, the hat
is the object. We need to turn the hat into the subject,
so again, we start with this, "This hat was made last year.", and you don't say who made
it because the hat is now the subject: The hat was made last year. That's now passive, okay? And finally: Someone on YouTube asked me to
explain active and passive verbs. And that's what I've done, so they asked me,
so again, "me" is the object, but we're going to turn "me" into the subject, so "I was asked
to explain active and passive verbs." So, I hope I've done it in a way that is nice
and simple to understand and easy to follow how to change from one to the other. Okay, so, just to mention also, there's a
very good lesson by Emma on the way politicians use passive forms of verbs and the way politicians
do that to avoid responsibility for something bad that happened, so do look out for Emma's
lesson on that. So, if you'd like to go the website www.engvid.com
, there's a quiz on this subject, so please give that a try, see how you do, and thank
you for watching and see you again next time. Bye for now.
