The passive voice was studied (by you!)

Good afternoon Pre-Inters!

Today we went passive crazy! I hope your brains didn't explode after the lesson!! 

We started off with three very important questions...

So lets start with the first question... What is it?? OK, so very simply, the passive voice is...

What we use when we want the action of the sentence (the do) to be more important than the agent (the doer). 

For example, if I am writing an essay about Shakespeare I will write 

"Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet" (active)

But if I am writing an essay about Romeo and Juliet then I will write

"Romeo and Juliet was written by Shakespeare" (passive)

So when I use the passive I move the agent (Shakespeare) to the end of the sentence and the action (wrote Romeo and Juliet) to the beginning.

OK so next question, how do we form it? Here is a picture of the board from class...

Passive form in red. Remember, we always use a verb 3 (past participle) in the passive form

We completed a worksheet to practise forming the passive in different tenses. 

Lastly (and most importantly), why do we use it? Here is the board...

I checked the spelling and 'graffitied' is the correct verb 3!

So the three questions, what, how and why have been answered (by me)!

Next we looked through some newspapers and magazines to find some passive sentences and this is what we found...

Excellent work!!

If you feel that you need some more practice try here, here and here. 

Don't forget that your writing test is due tomorrow. I will not accept it on Thursday or Friday. Also remember that tomorrow is your reading and listening exam! Exciting stuff!

See you soon :-)