The Passive Voice

Week 10^th -12^th

Hello! How are you doing?

We started last week talking about Canadians and sports.

Canadians don’t hate doing sports. Men like jogging and women love doing aerobics. They don’t mind playing team games.

What sports do you enjoy doing?

I can’t stand (hate) watching tennis on TV. I think it’s the most boring sport to watch!

I prefer watching football because it’s faster.

What about you?

Don’t forget:

We usually say the verb in “-ing” after love, hate, like, don’t mind, can’t stand, can’t bear, enjoy and prefer, when we talk generally about hobbies or leisure activities.

We listened to and talked about “The Mothers of Invention”

Did you know that:

… disposable nappies, bullet-proof vests, the dishwasher and the windscreen wipers were invented by women?

Text- messaging was invented by the Finnish (from Finland) company Nokia to help Finnish teenagers who were very shy.

Light bulbs are made specially to last only a certain number of hours so that the manufacturers make money.

The first Harry Potter book was written in a café in Edinburgh

The 2010 Football World cup was won by the national Spanish football team.

“Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” is a famous movie that was filmed in Spain.

America was discovered by Cristopher Columbus.

“Callos” and “Cocido Madrileño” are eaten a lot in Madrid.

The Iberian lynx is only found in Spain.

This is how we make passive sentences:

Farmers	grow	bananas	in the Canary Islands.
Subject	V	Object
Bananas	Are grown	In the Canary Islands
Subject	Passive V
Shakespeare	wrote	Hamlet.
Subject	V	Object
Hamlet	Was written	by Shakespeare.
Subject	Passive V	Agent

The object becomes the subject of the passive sentence. The subject becomes the agent. When the agent isn’t important or it’s a pronoun, it isn’t necessary to write it.

The verb changes into passive voice by writing the verb “to be” in the same tense as in the active sentence + the participle of the verb used in the active sentence.

Like this:

Present simple	produce		Present simple of “to be”	Am / is/are	+	participle	Is produced
They produce coffee in Brazil.			Coffee is produced in Brazil
Past simple	wrote		Past simple of “to be”	Was/were	+	participle	Was written
Dickens wrote ‘Oliver Twist’			‘Oliver Twist’ was written by Dickens.
Future simple	Will sell		Future of “to be”	Will be	+	participle	Will be sold
They will sell hundreds of tickets.			Hundreds of tickets will be sold.
Infinitive	buy		Infinitive of “to be”	be	+	participle	Be bought
You can buy the tickets on the net.			Tickets can be bought on the net.

We’ll continue tomorrow. 

Listening- How babies learn languages

Bye