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Six Minute Grammar from bbclearningenglish .com Hello and welcome to Six Minute Grammar with me, Catherine.
And me, Finn. And in today's programme, we're talking about...
Ow! You hit me, Catherine!
That hurts! Yes, Finn.
I hit you. OK, I hope there's a grammatical reason for that.
Always, Finn. I wouldn't hit you without a good reason.
And the reason is we're talking about active and passive voice today.
And in the active voice we say...
Catherine, hit Finn.
Subject, verb, object.
Like this. Ow! Ow! You hit me again.
All in the name of grammar.
OK. You hit me, subject, verb, object.
That's right. So speaking dramatically, the subject, that's me, performs or does the action.
And the object of the verb, that's me, receives or gets the action.
Another one? No. Catherine, hit Finn.
But of course I'm more important than you, Catherine.
So, I want to be at the beginning of the sentence.
So let's say it this way.
Finn was hit by Catherine.
Don't do it again. OK.
Finn was hit by Catherine.
We put the receiver of the verb at the beginning of the sentence plus the verb to be and the past participle to make a passive sentence.
Finn was hit by Catherine.
So here's Rob with some examples of active and passive sentences.
First, an active sentence.
Millions of people use the internet.
And with the receiver of the verb at the beginning of the sentence in the passive voice.
The internet is used by millions of people.
Active. A thief stole my car.
My car was stolen by a thief.
Active. Somebody rescued the child.
Passive. The child was rescued by somebody.
Thanks, Rob. And now that Catherine stops hitting me, we can look at that last pair of sentences more closely.
OK. Thank you. Right.
In many situations, the passive sentence, the child was rescued would sound more natural than somebody rescued the child.
Now, that's if we feel the child is more important than the rescuer.
Yes, and we don't know who rescued the child.
So we don't need to say by somebody.
It's just the child was rescued.
That's right. If you don't know who or what is doing the verb, or if it's not important, or if it's obvious, you can leave it out completely, like this.
My car was stolen. Let's have another sentence in active voice.
The storm destroyed the bridge.
And here it is in passive voice.
The bridge was destroyed by the storm.
Here the subject, the storm, is important, so we don't leave it out.
And we're talking about active and passive voice.
That's right. When the thing receiving the action of the verb is important, you can show this importance by putting it at the start of the sentence and using the verb, plus to be, plus the past participle of the verb, to make a passive form.
And if the person or thing doing the verb is obvious, unimportant or unknown, you can leave it out.
And now for our quiz.
Which of these news headlines sounds better?
Is it, A, 85 year old Mary Heiker has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
Or B, Mount Kilimanjaro has been climbed by an 85 year old Mary Heiker.
Well, they're both grammatically correct, but the active sentence, A, is the best, if you agree that the age and name of the climber is more important than the name of the mountain she climbed.
85 year old Mary Heiker has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
Next up, option A. The police arrested the burglars and took them to the police station.
And option B, the burglars were arrested and taken to the police station.
And the passive in option B is best.
We can guess that the police arrested the burglars, so we don't need to mention them.
The burglars were arrested and taken to the police station.
And the last one, option A.
William posted a photo of his birthday party on his webpage.
And option B. A photo of William's birthday party was posted by him on his webpage.
And option A sounds much better, because William is most definitely the subject of this sentence.
William posted a photo of his birthday party on his webpage.
Now, here's a tip for using the passive voice in spoken English.
You may hear people use the verb GET instead of the verb BE like this.
Your bike will get stolen if you don't lock it.
Yeah, right. And if you hit your colleagues, Catherine.
If you hit your colleagues for a non -grammatical reason, Finn, you will get into trouble.
OK, well, thank you very much.
And there we are. The passive voice is made up with an object plus the verb to be plus the past participle.
And we use it when we're more interested in the object of a verb or if the subject is unknown or obvious.
There's more about this on our website at bbclearningenglish .com.
Join us again soon for more six minute grammar.
Bye. Bye.
