Active and Passive Voice

Every English sentence with a verb is either in the active voice or the passive voice. Knowing the difference, and being able to convert between them, is a major skill in KJSEA English — and useful for writing news reports, scientific reports, and formal essays.

Active voice:

In an active sentence, the subject does the action.

Formula: Subject + Verb + Object

Example: Wanjiru kicked the ball.

• Subject: Wanjiru (the doer)
• Verb: kicked
• Object: the ball (the thing acted on)

Passive voice:

In a passive sentence, the subject receives the action — the action is done TO it.

Formula: Object (becomes subject) + form of "be" + past participle + (by + doer)

Example: The ball was kicked by Wanjiru.

• New subject: The ball (the thing acted on)
• Form of "be": was
• Past participle: kicked
• Doer: by Wanjiru

The same idea expressed in both ways:

Converting active → passive — five steps:

1. Make the object of the active sentence the subject of the passive sentence.
2. Change the verb to a form of "to be" in the SAME tense, followed by the past participle of the main verb.
3. Make the original subject the doer, introduced by "by" (or drop it if not needed).
4. Pronouns change: I/we/he/she/they → me/us/him/her/them (object form).
5. Check the tense matches between the two sentences.

Tense table for active → passive:

When to use the passive voice:

The passive voice is useful when:

• The doer is unknown — My phone was stolen. (We don't know who.)
• The doer is obvious — The thief was arrested. (Obviously by police.)
• The action matters more than the doer — Vaccinations are given every Tuesday.
• Writing formal or scientific reports — The water was heated to 80°C.
• News headlines often use passive — Suspect arrested by police.

When NOT to use the passive:

• When the doer is interesting or important to the sentence.
• In storytelling and creative writing — active voice feels more direct and lively.
• "Mistakes were made" (passive) is famously used by politicians to dodge responsibility — active is "I made mistakes".

Common student mistakes to avoid:

• Using the wrong form of "be" for the tense. Past simple needs was/were; past continuous needs was/were being; never just being alone.
• Forgetting to change the verb to the past participle. Active eat → passive needs eaten, not eat; active write → written, not write.
• Wrong pronoun form. Active "They saw me" → passive "I was seen by them" — note the pronoun changes (me → I, they → them).
• Trying to make intransitive verbs passive. Verbs that don't have an object (sleep, run, arrive, die) cannot be passive. You can say "The cat slept" — there is no object to make into a subject.
• Adding "by" when there is no doer. "The thief was arrested" sounds fine; "The thief was arrested by" needs a doer or just stops there.

Past participle reminder:

For regular verbs, the past participle is verb + -ed: played, walked, watched. For irregular verbs, you must learn them: go → gone, eat → eaten, write → written, take → taken, see → seen, drive → driven.

CBC Grade 5–6 introduces tenses in the active voice; Grade 7 covers active and passive voice and how to convert between them; Grade 8–9 extends to formal report writing where the passive is common — material that appears in KJSEA and beyond.