Podcast 91 - Passive and active

Story starts at 11:19

Hello, and welcome back to Practising English. And today I'm going to be talking about the passive. And this is a follow-up session from 'Introduction to the Passive', which was episode 40. That was a B1 level session. I consider this to be more B2 because I'm going to talk in a little more detail about the passive. So here we go...

Passive voice structure - Granny will be looked after

First of all, then, I'll just give you an example of the passive. I'm going to imagine grandmother is ill and she needs to go to hospital. I say to my children,

The nurses will look after granny very well in hospital.

Or, I could say,

Granny will be looked after very well in hospital.

Now, in fact, the second sentence, which was the passive form, is better in this circumstance. Why? I'll explain that in just one moment.

Passive structure

But let's just look again at the structure of the passive. So in the active, the nurses will look after... we've got the future form, 'will look [after]' and the passive must be the verb to be in the same tense and the same aspect as the verb in the active. So will look after becomes Granny will be and then followed by the past participle, always, of the main verb in the active form.

Granny will be looked after.

Let's look again at one of the main reasons why we use the passive. And it's not just to make exercises for all those students who are learning English and give them the headache of transforming sentences from the active to the passive. No, there's a very good reason for it.

The passive - to emphasise the important thing or person

One of those reasons that I'm going to talk about is the importance of the thing we're talking about - the thing or the person. In this case here, if I was talking to my children, and I wanted them to feel assured that Granny was going to be okay. I would say,

Granny will be looked after very well in hospital. Don't worry!

Now that sounds better than the active form.

The nurses will look after Granny...

because it's Granny who is the important person, the important part of that phrase, and we put her at the beginning of the sentence. We put the important thing or person at the beginning.

Okay, I'll give another example of that. This is a little story of a little girl who had a dog. Her dog, Fido, which is a typical name for English dogs. She took it to the park one day for a walk and it ran off and got lost. And the little girl was very, very upset, and she went home to her mum and dad and she said, 'I've lost Fido. I've lost him. Fido has been lost'. She made some posters with a photo of Fido and telephone number on the poster and his name and also a little reward of 10 pounds for anybody who found Fido. Three days later, the telephone rang. The mother picked up the phone, and she turned to the little girl, whose name was Mindy. And she said,

Mindy! Fido has been found!

Fido has been found. Because Fido is the important part of this story. So it's natural that we put him at the beginning of the sentence and not, 'someone has found Fido', which is okay too, but it sounds natural to put Fido at the beginning - Fido has been found!

Here's another example where perhaps the doer of the sentence, the subject of the sentence, is more important. In this case, it's, well, it's about my younger brother years ago, who never helped around the house. He never did anything at all to help mum and dad. Then one day he changed his ways. My mother said to me,

Well, you won't believe this, but your brother has ironed all the clothes!

Your brother has earned all the clothes. So that's an active sentence. And it sounds better than,

All the clothes have been ironed.

And even better than,

All the clothes have been ironed by your brother.

Why? Because the important part of the story is your brother (or my brother), because he has suddenly changed his ways. And now he's done this wonderful thing of ironing all the clothes - because nobody likes ironing, do they? So that's an active sentence there. And it's better as an active sentence, rather than the passive version.

The passive and 'it's said that...' etc.

The next thing to say, then, is to talk about the importance of verbs often used in the passive when we're talking about things that people say or think or believe. And we often use the passive form. You'll see this written perhaps in a written form, or perhaps somebody's talking in a lecture. Sentences, for example,

It is said that...

or, the past tense,

It was said that..., It was thought that..., It was believed that..., It was considered that...,

or,

It was known that...

I've got some interesting facts for you. A little bit about the knowledge of the world. Things that people believe or say, and the passive sounds good here to express these ideas.

So here's one,

It is believed that glaciers and ice sheets hold 69% of the world's fresh water.

So fresh water being not salt water, fresh water being what we drink, drinking water. And 69% of the world's freshwater is locked up in glaciers. Well, so it is believed.

This is perhaps a rather frightening one.

It is believed that the worst droughts...

Well, it is believed or is known that the worst droughts in Europe for over 2000 years have happened since 2015.

And this they discovered by cutting into very old trees. Some, which last up to 2000 years old. By counting the rings and examining the rings of these old trees, they can see which years were very dry, and which years were rainy. And the years since 2015 have been the driest. And those have been often years of drought, of more drought than the past 2000 years.

Then moving on to another interesting fact.

Deep sea creatures have been found in volcanoes on the seabed.

It is thought that these sea creatures - really most of them are of bacteria or tiny microscopic creatures - were the origins of life on Earth.

So a fascinating little fact there of the volcanoes, deep down under the sea on the seabed.

The last one, which is a positive one, and it's a good news one about the environment.

It is thought that the Earth's ozone layer (that's the layer of atmosphere, which protects us from the sun's rays)....

It is thought that the Earth's ozone layer will fully recover in 50 years from now.

And that is thanks to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons or CFO's. As these are gases that were used very frequently in fridges and aerosol cans. So that's good news! It's believed that the ozone layer will repair itself in 50 years time.

I'm going to finish, then, with a story. What you can do is to listen carefully and you can get a pen and write down the uses of the passive in this story. It's mostly this form that I'm talking about. It is said..., it is thought..., it is believed..., etc. Then you can get over to Practising English and check your answers by reading the audio script. Okay, so here we go. It's a Wild West story and the story is called Larry the Kid.

The story of Larry the Kid

Passive voice - not much is known about him

Larry the Kid was a gunman back in the days of the Wild West. He was an outlaw. Nothing he did was legal. It's said that he lived during the beginning of the 19th century - somewhere in Arizona. Not much is known about him because he travelled from town to town and never settled down in one place. It is believed he made his living almost entirely by using his two pistols. He robbed stagecoaches that were arriving from the east of the country and that brought wealthy people to the west. This type of robbery is called a 'hold-up'. It is said that he worked alone – if you could call attacking stagecoaches work! Ha, ha, ha! Larry the Kid was considered to be one of the most dangerous but also one of the most successful outlaws of his time – and he was never captured.

However, when Larry the Kid got older, his robberies and hold-ups suddenly stopped. What had happened? Did he feel sorry for what he had done? Did he regret all the pain and suffering he had caused the good folk of Arizona?

Well, one day, I remember - I guess it was in the 1840s - I was sitting in a bar in Tuscon. I saw this man sitting alone in a corner. I guess he was in his 60s. He looked pretty sad and depressed. I felt sorry for him. As I was alone too, I walked over to the man and offered to buy him a drink. The man cheered up and said he'd have a double whiskey. He started talking to me about different things. But after a few whiskeys, the man suddenly asked me a strange question – right out of the blue.*

'Have you ever killed a man?' he looked serious.

I was really surprised at the question and I felt uncomfortable. 'No, sir,' I replied. 'I can't say I have. I'm a businessman. I deal in cattle. I do honest work.'

'I've killed many men,' the man shook his head sadly. 'I used to be among the best and fastest guns in the West. But not anymore.' The man put his right hand above the table and held it there. 'I just can't shoot anymore. My hand shakes.'

I looked carefully at the man's right hand. It was as steady as a rock**. So I said, 'But your hand doesn't shake, mister. It looks very steady to me!'

'Right,' said the man, and then he brought his left hand and put it above the table. The hand shook like a leaf***. Then he said, 'The problem is… I shoot with this one!'

*Out of the blue - very suddenly, without warning.
**As steady as a rock - not moving, very still.
***Shake like a leaf - trembling very much (like a leaf on a tree).

Story inspired by the scene with Gene Wilder from the film Blazing Saddles.

See exercises for practice on the passive voice...