Passive voice and active voice | Learn English | Canguro English

hello and welcome to kangaroo English I'm Christian and today we are going to be studying the passive everything you need to know about about the passive so how are you fine thanks yes you good good thing so um what do you do are you a student or do you want I am biotechnology cool so what is your what is your dream job for the future in biotechnology and working a number three water and medicines or investigate about animals okay do you want to create like a terminator No well um I don't know if you know but in English the passive receives a lot of criticism yeah well it's it's a trend that started in the in the 20th century and in other languages the passive doesn't get criticized like this but you know even recently in the last year there have been articles on the BBC in The Guardian newspaper and in lots of style guides in different companies politicians they all say you shouldn't use the passive you should always use the active okay and very famously George Orwell the author he said you should never use the passive when you can use the active okay but George Orwell for example was a massive hypocrite because he in his books he used the passive more than any other offer and and in in these articles that criticized the passive they don't even know what the passive is they have examples and it's the incorrect they don't use the passive right now clearly it's it's ridiculous to criticize our verbal tense to say don't use the passive it's like saying don't use the past anymore and as you're going to see the passive in English is not only very useful but sometimes is absolutely necessary yeah and avoiding the passive or not using the passive will not help you to be a better right time and will not help you to be a better person or anything okay the passive is good and the best I can think I can say about the passive is that um Jack Reacher you know who Jack Reacher's he uses the passive um he doesn't because he's the fictional character but Lee Lee child this is the passive all the time in these books and these are the best books in the world so so so that's the best on defense of the passive so why don't we go and I can't study the passive there are lots of reasons to use the passive but there are four main reasons so the first reason is if we don't know the actor so this is not the actor like the actor this is like the person or the thing performing the action so that's the main reason we don't know the second one is we don't want to talk about we don't want to mention the actor for some reason maybe legal reasons or because the actor is very negative okay the next one is if we are more interested in the action then then the person who is doing the action okay to avoid formal or complex constructions okay so even though in English that the passive is is considered more formal sometimes we use the passive because if we don't this passive is very very formal okay so these are the four main reasons why I would use the passive okay so we're going to look we're going to look at each one in more detail okay so sometimes in in life things happen and we don't know who who did the thing like for example imagine you you you you come out to your car and your car is not that your car is is in a different so you don't know who or what moved your car so you can say my car has been moved okay so when we say this you can see we we don't have a subject a person who moved the car so this is the perfect example of the passive when we don't know the actor sometimes we we don't want to mention the actor now this could be because of psychological reasons like because maybe it's like very negative thing or it could be to avoid legal problems like for example the first type if it's something negative you could say pay will be reduced so your pay will be reduced but I'm not saying I will reduce your play or the company will reduce your pay so it's like a trick a trick to to give you negative news but without without taking responsibility or the second thing is if if we want to avoid legal problems like for example you could say politician politician was murdered like this so maybe maybe there is a suspect for the murder or maybe we know we know who did the murder but for legal reasons we don't want to say you know this man killed the politician so when we when we use this apply to she was murdered we have no actor so we can avoid into problems like this so this is the second type the second reason to use the passive the next reason is when we are more interested in the action so if we imagine that we want to talk about a new swimming pool in in this in this town so we we don't want to say that the council is building the swimming pool because we want to we want to focus on the other swimming pool so we'd say a swimming pool a swimming pool is being built very good and then we could say by the council so but this when we when we use the passive we can focus on we can focus on this action and the person doing action is not important to us so so this is another reason to use the passive so the next one is to avoid complex or fall constructions so if we look at formal constructions so in Spanish you have reflexive pronouns reflexive verbs and that's really that's perfect but in English these reflexive pronouns and they are now very like old fashioned we don't use them like you could say for example in the past you would say one sees these problems okay so one seizes was well one this would be the equivalent of like in Spanish using the the reflexive the reflexive verb one because this one is an impersonal pronoun for for somebody now in modern English you we would substitute this with a you you see this these problems so this is also this is you know more um this is a more common thing to say this is like very formal if you're talking to the queen yeah you sound very strange if you say this but the third option is to use the passive and you but you could change this you can say these problems are saying so so that way we can avoid using one and you and we can just say they're saying there's no actor involved so this is a third way that we can avoid a very formal construction another another problem in English okay is with very complex constructions if in one sentence in one clause we have to change the subject for example like this um when they arrived at school a teacher taught then oops then so what we have here is we have a sentence with one clause okay but in the middle of the in the middle of the course we we change the subject and then we have the them this is referring back to two here it's it's like it's a little bit confusing because we're changing the subject but if we use the passive then we don't have this problem so we can say when they arrived at school okay so we can use this this first part when they arrived at school and now we don't put the teacher okay we continue with a so we say they were taught and then we can say if we want we can say by our teacher but here so now this sentence is much more simple and easy to understand because we have the same subject so the passive is really good too to avoid complex constructions like this there is there is one one restriction okay unless so have you heard about Paco so I'm asking you a question and then I can reply using the passive I can say our key was kissed by Sal okay now now this this sentence is perfect okay because the subject the subject of the sentence we can say is not new because this subject we have here okay the subject and the object are the same so this is this sentence is perfect but if we say Sodom was kissed by him so this this sentence grammatically is perfect there's no problems here but this sada is new information okay she knew who is cyber Luis Allah and we cannot use new information as a subject of a passive sentence it sounds bad in English so this one's correct and this one is not correct so now let's look at the construction of the passive very important so how do we how do we make the passive do you know yeah okay it is taken it's taken by me okay if in the normal senses I take a car okay good you need to put the other verb you have to be to make the path exactly exactly so so the passive the construction the passive is basically we have the verb to be okay and this is this is this is the part we conjugate okay so we want to conjugate this verb to be this is the important part and then afterwards we have the participant so these two things together this is the passive there are other types of the passive like the bear passive and but we're not going to talk about those today because they're different okay but the best to be a must be in the same instance these work in the normal sentence yes exactly exactly so for example in this sentence we can see that the verb to be is in present simple so this sentence originally in the active was prison simple exactly so we have to be and participle so yeah we conjugate this so we can make this present simple present perfect past simple past continuous so this is what's important and the participle never changes always participle so we have the teacher ate all the pizza okay so the first thing is we need to find the subject of the sentence so with the subject of the sentence very good and so this is our subject now in the passive the subject is optional we can put it or we cannot put it okay where's the verb good here we have the verb and what what tense is this past groups of the past okay and then we have the object of the sentence here all the pizza good so to change this active into the passive we put the object is now the subject so for example all the pizza and then we're going to have our verb in the past simple okay here so the first part to be so to be a possible very good so this is to be in the past simple was eaten very good eaten is the participle of eat of a beet was eaten exactly so this part is now optional so we can put a lot so we could say we'll put it in parenthesis by the teacher perfect now that was easy because we have one verb but what if we have two verbs like an auxilary verb like for example I can smell that paint son so I'm obsessed with pizza so first let's identify the subject with the subject oh good so this is now optional we can put by our by okay now here we have the auxiliary N and the main verb okay so in a situation like this we we want to focus on the action the main verb so this is the verb that's important to us okay this is our main verb our active verb okay and what what tense is this it's in the present because it's with the auxilary but this sentence is in the present okay so we take prison okay presidency and the object very good is the object of the sentence so in this case as with before so this becomes the subject that pizza now here we don't touch it okay we have we we don't we don't touch it this is our main focus is our interest here so this we transfer straight across can and now this is where we put our to be and our participle so present simple me good because we have a load also always infinitive very good can be smell very good so here we have two options smelt with the tea or smell like this okay two options to smell the smelled okay and then in brackets a week now we can put the subject if we want okay by me very good it's perfect excellent so if we have auxilary verbs no problems easy now on some verbs in English take a direct object and indirect object like for example he gave the students of course of course okay so here we can see that we have um we have a direct object okay which is here the students direct object and here we have the pixels is the indirect object and then here we have the verb okay and a subject the subject which is now optional so in the passive which one do we use exactly very good you can use both but one of them is much more common than the other one which one do you think is the most common exactly exactly the pizza the indirect object is much more common much more natural in English so in that case for oh here yes you say a pizza good because this is the past very good was given very good to the student so yes and then when we put the the direct object and the other option is the other option is we use the the direct object so the students the same was given good was given a pizza good and in both of these cases we can say by him by him or by whom but this one this one is much more natural much more so you you noticed that um sometimes with the passive we put by and sometimes we it's optional so in English there are no rules about this okay it's a matter of personal choice and it depends whether the sentence makes sense or not but personally I think that the the main objective of the passive is to eliminate the subject so if we put the subject at the end it's a bit stupid so I think unless it's really necessary know by but there's no rule about this so I'm in English now in informal colloquial speech okay instead of using the verb to be you can use get in all of the passives so for example if you said um I can't think of an example oh I again the PISA oh I eat pizza every day so in this case we can actually put the the object is we can say please so but instead of saying pizza is eaten we use get okay we conjugate the verb get so it's a pizza kids eat them every day so this is a more informal way of speaking so you will hear this slide car if you watch television or you know when you're talking to your friends in English you can use get and probably not good for like an exam or for for writing but in emails or when you're speaking no problems can you always put good always yes yes exactly and we would conjugate this like to be so you would say like in the past court or in their continuous is getting them so it's just um a typical change in English for for no reason okay so I think that that is everything that you need to know about the passive yeah so let's um let's sit down and we can play a little game and you can practice okay so now we're going to practice the passive okay so this game is really simple so you just need a piece of paper and a pencil so what I want you to do is I want you to write five nouns okay and five verbs okay and five famous people so in total 15 things okay and the game is really simple okay what you have to do is you have to create five newspaper headlines and in general newspaper headlines are written in the passive always so we could invent a story like for example um I don't know Penelope Cruz was eaten by a dog okay so what's the story with Penelope Cruz and the dog what happened another big Bush is Manny Nixon was in the past what's right near tinder Weber hmm and dog comes same thing and bite bitter yeah and then later okay good Penelope Cruz eaten by dogs so that's the past yes that's actually the so this is an example of the bare passive which means in newspaper headlines we we cut out the to be so we just say Penelope Cruz eaten by dog technically it's the passive but without to be to make it short term okay what about what about Johnny Cash what happens Johnny Cash hmm so maybe Johnny Cash with the verb run and the renowned road - hey was good and maybe which you could say run over which is talking java - yeah yeah yeah so it wasn't right yeah it's the same exactly the same was wrong over in the world very good so Johnny Cash was run over on the road very good to have some the passive the game okay what about Beyonce what happened to Beyonce I know what about work and house fiance was margit good was worked very good and hard yeah at home very good she was worked at home so her personal trainer came in and worked oh come on Beyonce 200 push-ups yeah okay very good so so so this is a way that on that you can practice the passive at home just with a piece of paper and a very simple list of nouns and verbs and and some famous people and you can create some headlines you can tell stories about exactly what happened to the to the famous people so how do you feel about the passive now I know everything okay okay very good excellent well if you would like to see any more videos about the English language about grammar vocabulary exam preparation anything and if you would like to see more of Raquel then don't forget to subscribe to kangaroo English um thank you very much for coming and I will see you a class bye-bye

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 42,932

Keywords: canguro, learning english, english grammar, passive, passive voice, passive vs active, passive or active, active voice, passive voice and active voice

Id: cDddeUZ-zqo

Length: 27min 55sec (1675 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2015