Passives in use
Investigating the effect of using passives
The slides in the Activity page in the right hand menu contain examples of passives from real writing. Have students do the following:
- Look at the extracts in their contexts.
- Identify the passives.
- For each example, discuss why you think a passive has been used rather than an active.
- Is the passive an agentless passive or is the agent expressed in a phrase starting with by? If it is agentless, why might the agent have been left unexpressed?
- What is the effect if the passive is changed to an active? Try it and see.
- Is the choice of a passive to do with the topic being discussed?
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