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How to use Active and Passive Voice in English

Hi. I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishwithVanessa.com. Do you know how to use passive and active sentences? Let’s talk about it. When I was in school my English teachers always said, don’t use passive sentences. That’s not the best way to express something. But, do you know what?

That’s not a reality. There are specific times and places when you should use passive sentences. Today, I’m going to describe what active sentences are, when to use them, and what passive sentences are, and when to use them, because you want to make sure you’re using them in the right context, at the right time. Before we get started, I want to give you a little test.

I have two sentences, and I want you to guess which one is active, and which one is passive. Of course, we haven’t talked about this yet, so you’re just using your gut, your instinct to tell you which one is active and which one is passive. The first sentence is, the dishes weren’t done yesterday.

The second sentence is, I didn’t do the dishes yesterday. Which one is active and which one is passive? Let’s talk about the answer to that question at the end of this lesson. I’ll ask you it again, and I hope that you’ll feel more confident in your answer. First, let’s talk about active sentences. What I the world are they? They key to an active sentence is that the subject is the one who’s doing the action of the verb. That’s why they’re called active sentences.

There’s an action that’s happening and the subject is doing it. A quick example is that stereotypical time when maybe you were younger and you came home from school and your mom asked you, what’d you do today? Maybe you said, not much. Maybe you said, nothing. But let’s imagine that you give some kind of answer. You might say, well, we studied math. I took a test.

The teacher read us a book. The principal yelled at me because I got in trouble. These are all active sentences. The subject is doing the action. The subject is directly linked to the action. The best time to use active sentences is when you’re telling a story. It’s engaging, or linking the subject to the verb, so it’s feeling more active. You’re following the story. There’s more action verbs.

This is a great way to tell a story, to write directly. If you want to be indirect, this is not the voice for you. You should you use passive voice, which we’ll talk about in a moment. But this is a great way to be direct and to tell an interesting story. What’s passive voice? Well, the key to passive voice is that the subject is not doing the action of the verb. The person who’s doing the action is not the subject.

Let’s imagine that every day when you get home from work, dinner is made. Dinner is finished. Do you know who made dinner? No. It’s a mystery. But in this sentence the subject is dinner. Dinner is made. That’s great. I would love to come home and dinner would be already made, and on the table. That would amazing. This isn’t really the reality in my life, but maybe it is for you.

You get home from work, and dinner is made. Dinner is on the table. Dinner is waiting to be eaten by you. Who is doing the action here? We don’t know. It’s not in the sentence, so you might say, dinner is made by my wife. Dinner is made by my husband. Dinner is made by my mom.

Dinner is made. Dinner is not making itself. Someone is doing it, but that person is not the subject of the sentence, and so, voila, we have a passive sentence. There are three times that you are going to use the passive voice. The first one is when you don’t know who did the action. Let’s imagine that you’re car is stolen.

This is a perfect passive voice sentence. We don’t know who did it. You could say, the thief stole my car. This is active voice. But you can really easily use a passive voice sentence here, and say, my car was stolen. Car is the subject, but car is not doing the action. The car didn’t steal itself, so here we’re using the passive voice, because we don’t know who did the action.

The second time that you’re going to use the passive voice is when you just don’t care who did the action. Maybe it’s not important or relevant to your sentence. You might say, my car was made in 2010. I didn’t say, Mazda made my car in 2010. No. I just said, my car was made. My car didn’t make itself, but I’m not stating who did the action, because it’s just not relevant, or it’s not important, or maybe I don’t care to share that information with you. I know who did it. It’s not the first reason.

I do know who made my car, but I just don’t care to share it with you. My car was made in 2010. The third time that you’re going to use the passive voice is one of the most useful, and this is when you don’t want to blame someone for doing an action. Let’s imagine that you have an agreement with your husband, like I do. In our house, Dan does the dishes and I help to do a lot of tasks for our baby. If he doesn’t do the dishes, I might say, you didn’t do the dishes.

This is an active sentence. It’s direct, and it’s clear. But if I want to be a little bit more polite, a little bit more indirect, I might say, oh, I saw that the dishes weren’t done yesterday. The dishes weren’t done. I’m not saying, you didn’t do the dishes. We’re not stating that the subject here, the active sentence, you didn’t do the dishes. Instead, it’s passive. It’s a little bit more indirect, and depending on the situation, this could be a good idea, or a bad idea.

Personally for me with my husband, we would rather be more direct with each other, especially in these kinds of situations. We don’t want to be passive aggressive. But in certain situations, especially at work, this is really a great idea. When you want to be indirect, you don’t want to blame someone, so you’re going to be more indirect.

Let’s take a look at a quick work situation where you’re going to hear two people talking about a task that wasn’t done, and they’re trying to figure out who should do it, but they’re trying to be polite and not blame anyone. You’re going to hear the active voice used, and the passive voice used.

I recommend looking at the screen and trying to follow along, so that you can make these sentences yourself. Hi, Daniel, do you have a moment? Sure, what’s on your mind? Well, when I came into work today, I noticed the boxes didn’t get put away last night. Uh huh, I see. And so this morning, someone had to put them away. You’re saying that you had to put the boxes away?

Yes, that’s it, and when things don’t get put away, someone needs to spend extra time cleaning in the morning. Ah, yes, yes. Well, I certainly don’t want boxes being left out, and employees wasting time. That’s why I wanted to bring it to your attention today. What should we do? Well, whose job is it to put everything away at night? The problem is that this task isn’t assigned to anyone yet. You seem like a responsible person. Why aren’t you in charge of boxes at night?

Oh, I guess I could do it. Excellent. Then the problem is solved. I hope you enjoyed that quick conversation and before we go today, let’s return to the test sentences that we talked about at the beginning of this lesson. The first sentence was, the dishes weren’t done yesterday. The second sentence was, I didn’t do the dishes yesterday. Which one is passive and which one is active?

I hope that now that we’ve talked about this a bit, you feel a little bit more comfortable choosing one or the other. The subject, the action, who is doing the action? Who is the one that is doing the dishes, or not doing the dishes? It’s me. I didn’t do the dishes. I’m the one who’s doing the action, so the second sentence is going to be our active sentence. The first sentence is going to be passive.

The dishes aren’t doing themselves. That would be amazing, actually. We don’t have a dishwasher, so I’m the dishwasher, or in this situation, actually Dan’s the dishwasher now. But we are using the active voice to say, I didn’t do the dishes. Or, the passive voice, the dishes weren’t done.

Now, I have a challenge for you. Can you make an active sentence and a passive sentence and write them in the comments? Maybe you can let me know about some chores in your house, and who did them, who didn’t do them, or maybe you can make it passive and you don’t have to tell me. Just tell me that the sweeping wasn’t done yesterday, or the vacuuming wasn’t done yesterday.

You can make it indirect, or passive if you like. I hope that you enjoyed this lesson, and learned a lot. I know the active and passive voice are really valuable for improving your English and making your sentence structure more complex.

Thanks so much for learning with me, and I’ll see you the next time. Bye.