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And the police came and a man was arrested and he was put in a police car and they had a police dog.
It was all quite dramatic.
When I was a student, my house was burgled and my favourite possession at the time was stolen.
Hello and welcome to Learning English Grammar.
I'm Beth.
And I'm Phil.
We just heard Pippa talking about witnessing a robbery and Neil having his favourite possession stolen.
I wonder what it was?
Well, I'm sure we'll find out.
Also in this episode, we'll learn when and how to use the passive.
An example of the passive is a man was arrested, instead of the police arrested a man, which we call active.
You can read along with this podcast using the transcript on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
So, Beth, we're talking about crime.
Have you ever had anything stolen?
Well, when I was a child, our house was burgled and some of my mum's jewellery was stolen.
They never found out who did it.
But yeah, I think that's it.
What about you?
Yeah, our house got burgled about three times when I was a kid.
We kept losing TVs and yeah, some of my mum's jewellery as well.
Oh my gosh.
Well, I've been speaking to Pippa and Neil about crime.
Listen for the person or people who did the stealing.
Do we know exactly who committed the crimes and does it matter?
I was woken up in the middle of the night by an alarm on my road and I looked out the window and I saw someone with a torch inside the shop opposite my house.
So I phoned the police and the shop was being broken into.
Somebody was trying to steal things and the police came and And a man was arrested and he was put in a police car and they had a police dog.
It was all quite dramatic.
Have you ever had to call the police?
Yes.
When I was a student, my house was burgled and my favourite possession at the time was stolen.
My electric guitar was stolen by these burglars who had broken into my house.
Did they catch the person who broke into your house?
Well, the police said that we'd been broken into by children and they could tell because they had put something on the ground so they could reach up to take things.
Oh dear.
So Neil's guitar was stolen.
Was stolen is the passive.
And there were lots of other examples of the passive too.
Pippa said a man was arrested.
We use the passive when we want to emphasise the action more than the person who did the action.
A man was arrested.
The arrest is more important than the person who arrested the man.
In fact, the person who arrested the man isn't even mentioned because it's not important.
The emphasis is on the arrest.
There's lots to learn about the passive, so let's welcome our resident grammar guru, Georgie.
Hi guys, I've come to help our listeners with the passive.
You've already said we use it to emphasise the action, not the person who did the action.
In fact, this is so true that we often don't mention who did the action at all.
This could be because that person is not important or maybe we just don't know who did it.
Listen to Neil, who did the action?
When I was a student, my house was burgled.
He said, my house was burgled.
We don't know who burgled the house.
The person isn't mentioned.
Exactly.
So, how do we form the passive?
We make it with the verb be and the past participle.
The past participle is the third form of the verb.
For example, stolen.
Steal, stole, stolen.
And the verb be changes depending on the tense you want to use.
A man was arrested.
The verb was is used here because this sentence is in the past simple.
The action, the arrest, started and ended in the past.
And the past simple form of be is was.
So the sentence is a man was arrested.
Was plus the past participle.
OK, so how do we do this with other tenses?
Well, we also heard the past continuous in the passive.
Listen to Pippa.
The shop was being broken into.
OK, was being broken into.
So, we have was being, which is the past continuous form of the verb be.
And then the past participle of break into, which is broken into.
That's right.
And the past continuous is used here because the action happened in the past and it was a long activity.
Pippa looked out the window and called the police, all while the shop was being broken into.
Now we said earlier that the person who does the action isn't important.
Or we don't know who they are.
But if we want to say who did the action, how can we do it?
We can add the person or people to the end of the sentence with the preposition by.
Listen to Neil.
Who broke into his flat?
Well, the police said that we'd been broken into by children.
It was children.
Neil's flat was broken into by children.
Yes.
Neil could have not mentioned the people who did the action and said, we'd been broken into.
But when we want to say who did it, we add by and the person.
And you also might have noticed a different tense here.
Neil used the past perfect – had been broken into –
Well, thanks, Georgie.
We've been taught a lot in this lesson.
See you later.
Bye.
Bye.
Right, Phil, we are going to play a game to practice the passive.
We need to create a passive story about crime.
I will start with the sentence and you continue the story in the passive.
Play along with us.
Try to continue the story using a passive before we do.
Are you ready, Beth?
I am.
OK, so I arrived home, went into the kitchen and my coffee maker had been stolen.
The police were called and the coffee thief was discovered sipping coffee around the corner.
He was arrested and then was found guilty by a jury.
He was sentenced to a month in prison and was banned from drinking coffee for five years.
That's it for this episode.
We've learnt that Phil's house was broken into a lot when he was younger.
And we've learnt that the passive can be used with lots of different tenses.
We'll be back next week to learn some more grammar tips.
In the meantime, you can test what you've learnt in this episode with the worksheet on our website.
To learn more about tenses in English, watch Tenses with Georgie on our website now bbclearningenglishcom.
Goodbye for now.
Goodbye.
