Paragraph writing exercises using active and passive sentences.
Answers
Answer:
There are two main “voices” in English writing: the active voice and the passive voice. You’ve probably heard a lot about them—and you’ve probably been warned away from the passive voice. But what exactly are they?
In the simplest terms, an active voice sentence is written in the form of “A does B.” (For example, “Carmen sings the song.”) A passive voice sentence is written in the form of “B is done by A.” (For example, “The song is sung by Carmen.”) Both constructions are grammatically sound and correct. Let’s look at a couple more examples of the passive voice:
I’ve been hit! (or, I have been hit!)
Jasper was thrown from the car when it was struck from behind.
You may have noticed something unique about the previous two sentences: the subject of the sentence is not the person (or thing) performing the action. The passive voice “hides” who does the action. Despite these sentences being completely grammatically sound, we don’t know who hit “me” or what struck the car.
The passive is created using the verb to be and the past participle. When identifying passive sentences, remember that to be has other uses than just creating the passive voice. “She was falling” and “His keys were lost” are not passive sentences. In the first, to be is a continuous past verb, and in the second to be is past tense linking verb. There are two key features that will help you identify a passive sentence:
Something is happening (the sentence has a verb that is not a linking verb).
The subject of the sentence is not doing that thing.
Usage
As you read at the two sentences below, think about the how the different voice may affect the meaning or implications of the sentence:
Passive voice: The rate of evaporation is controlled by the size of an opening.
Active voice: The size of an opening controls the rate of evaporation.
The passive choice slightly emphasizes “the rate of evaporation,” while the active choice emphasizes “the size of an opening.” Simple. So why all the fuss? Because passive constructions can produce grammatically tangled sentences such as this:
Groundwater flow is influenced by zones of fracture concentration, as can be recognized by the two model simulations (see Figures 1 and 2), by which one can see . . .
The sentence is becoming a burden for the reader, and probably for the writer too. As often happens, the passive voice here has smothered potential verbs and kicked off a runaway train of prepositions. But the reader’s task gets much easier in the revised version below:
Two model simulations (Figures 1 and 2) illustrate how zones of fracture concentration influence groundwater flow. These simulations show . . .
To revise the above, all we did was look for the two buried things (simulations and zones) in the original version that could actually do something, and we made the sentence clearly about these two nouns by placing them in front of active verbs. This is the general principle to follow as you compose in the active voice: Place concrete nouns that can perform work in front of active verbs.