Active voice and Passive voice
A sentence is made of three basic parts, 'Subject', 'Verb', and 'Object.' Subject plays an active role because subject performs the verb (any act), on the object. Subject plays a primary role in a tense, Verb has main role in a tense, and object in a sentence plays a secondary role. A sentence cannot be completed by subject and verb, but it may complete by object.
Example: Ali plays football.
In this sentence 'Ali' is a 'subject' and the 'verb' he is performing is to 'Play'. and the action of playing is done with the object 'football'. The 'subject' of the tense attracks the center of attention and this tense is an example of 'active voice'. This sentence is called active voice because we focused on the person 'ALI' who uses the object to act on.
Example: Football is played by Ali.
In this tense 'Football' is on the place of 'Ali', and 'Ali' is on the place of football. This is an important and main transformation of subject into object and object into subject. This is called 'Passive Voice'. 'Passive' is antonyom of active. When we do not focus on the person who did the 'act', or when we want to stress on 'object' on which the act is performed. known as passive voice. Subject do not remains active, it become passive.
Rules to change Active Voice to Passive Voice
- Subject converts into object, and object changes to subject. or Subject replaces object, and object replaces subject. 'I' changes to 'me', He changes to him, She changes to her, we changes to us, They changes to them, you remains you.
- First or Second form of verb is changed to Third Form of Verb.
- Helping verbs will be changed according to tense. shown in table below.
- Third form of verb is followed by the addiotion of 'by'.
- Example:
She teach in English. (Active voice - Present Indefinite tense )
English is taught by her.(Passive Voice - Present indefinite tense.)
She Changed to her.
'English' changed to subject.
Teach changed to taught.
and by is added after verb.
List of helping verbs for Passive Voice Tenses
NOTE: Active voices of PERFECT CONTINUOUS TENSES of present, past and future tense never change into passive voice.
| Tenses | Active Voice | Passive Voice |
| Present Indefinite Tense | Do/Does | Is/Am/Are |
| Present Continuous Tense | Is/Am/Are | Is being/Am being/Are being |
| Present Perfect Tense | Have/Has | Have been/Has been |
| Past Indefinite Tense | Did | Was/Were |
| Past Continuous Tense | Was/Were | Was being/were being |
| Past Perfect Tense | Had | Had been |
| Future Indefinite Tense | Will | Will be |
| Future Continuous Tense | Will be | Will being |
| Future Perfect Tense | Will have/Will has | Will have been/Will has been |
Now we learn tese wise changes in converting Active Voice to Passive Voice with examples on next pages.