Understand How to Change Sentences into the Passive Structure

In this activity, you will learn how to change sentences so that they are passive.

In a passive sentence, the agent (the person or thing doing the action) is often left out.

For example:

Someone broke the window.

The window was broken.

We could write 'The window was broken by someone' but this sounds clumsy and doesn't add meaningful information to the sentence. Therefore, it's better to leave the extra wording (by someone) out.

Sometimes we know who the agent is but it's not important.

Competition winners will be notified in September.

In this sentence, it doesn't really matter who is doing the notifying, so this information can be left out.

The agent can also be left out of a passive sentence to build up suspense.

The door was pushed open slowly.

In this sentence, the author doesn't want the reader to know who is pushing open the door.

Now, let's put all this revision into practice and answer some questions!