How to teach passive actively

[Т А Кузнецова]

I found this interesting article on the site www.busyteacher.org

There are more there.

Passive Voice: Active Approach

1. Carry out an action!

Stand in front of your class. Drop a pen on the floor. Ask your students to tell you what has just happened and ask them to begin the sentence with your name. Someone should be able to say: “Ms. Rodriguez dropped a pen on the floor.” Write this sentence on the board. Ask students to identify the subject and the verb in this sentence; they should say the subject is “Ms. Rodriguez” and that the verb is “dropped”.

2. Repeat the action - Introduce the passive voice

Drop your pen on the floor one more time. Tell your students that you’ll tell them what has just happened, but this time your sentence will begin with, “The pen…” Go to the board and write, “The pen was dropped on the floor.” Ask your students to identify the subject; they should say it is the “pen”. Ask them to identify the verb; they should say it is “was dropped”.

3. Compare the two sentences

Point to the first sentence and ask if the subject is doing the action. They should say it is. Make sure they understand that subject is active, the one responsible for carrying out the action.

Point to the second sentence and ask if the subject is doing the action. They should it isn’t. Make sure they understand that the subject is passive, the one who is being acted upon.

Compare what happens to the verbs. Ask students what tense they see in the first example. They should recognize the past simple. Show students what happens in the second sentence: the auxiliary verb “to be” is used in the past tense (“was”) with the past participle, in this case “dropped”.

4. Give an example with “were"

This time drop several pens at the same time. Ask students to tell you what has just happened. Tell them to start the sentence with “The pens…” See if students figure out they should use “were” instead of “was” this time.

5. Practice with more passive voice examples

Carry out more actions and encourage students to describe what has happened in the passive voice:

Teacher puts some books under a chair.

S: Books were put under a chair.