مؤسسة الياسمين التأهلية

The Passive Voice

The passive voice is an easy lesson as long as we understand two things :

1. Sentence order.
2. The rule of passive voice.

Now let’s delve into explaining more what is said before.

1-Sentence order

Consider these changes in the table below :

Active Structure			Passive structure
Subject(1)	Verb(2)	Object (3)	Object (3)	Verb(2)	Subject(1)
Tom	Speaks	English	English	is spoken	by Tom
The students	wrote	the lesson	The lesson	was written	by students
My dad	is reading	a newspaper	a newspaper	is being read	by my father

As you may have noticed that the structure of the active is different from the passive in this way :

1. Active :    Subject + Verb + object
2. Passive :  Object  + verb  + subject

you may also have noticed that the verbs form in the active is different from the passive, and this is our next step in understanding this lesson.

2-The rule of passive voice

the verb form in the passive sentence is written this way :

BE + Past participle

Important : (Be) takes the tense/time of the verb in the active form .

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the following table shows the different tenses in the active/passive forms:

Tenses	Active	Passive
simple present	Leila feeds an animal	an animal is fed by Leila
present continuous	Leila is feeding an animal	an animal is being fed by Leila
present perfect	Leila has fed an animal	an animal has been fed by Leila
simple past	Leila fed an animal	an animal was fed by Leila
past continuous	Leila was feeding an animal	an animal was being fed by Leila
past perfect	Leila had fed an animal	an animal had been fed by Leila
the simple future	Leila will feed an animal	an animal will be fed by Leila
future perfect	Leila will have fed an animal	an animal will have been fed by Leila
modal verbs	Leila can feed an animal	an animal can be fed by Leila