Passive Voice Made Easy: be + Past Participle, When Should You Use It?
When reading news headlines, you often see The bridge was built in 1998. The sentence doesn't mention "who built the bridge." When reading product descriptions, you might also see The cake is baked at 180°C. These sentences have one thing in common: the subject of the sentence is the thing affected by the action, while the person performing the action takes a backseat. This is the passive voice.
Many people think the passive voice is difficult, but in fact, it has only one fixed formula. Today, we'll break it down, and you will find it is much easier to understand than you thought.
What Is the Passive Voice?
First, let's look at a comparison:
- Active: Someone cleans the room every day.
- Passive: The room is cleaned every day.
Active sentences focus on "who does it," while passive sentences focus on "what is done." When you want to put the focus on the object being affected, use the passive voice.
The core formula of the passive voice is simple:
be verb + past participle (past participle)
The past participle is the third form of a verb. Regular verbs add -ed (clean → cleaned), and irregular verbs need to be memorized (build → built, write → written, eat → eaten). The "be" verb changes according to the tense, while the past participle remains unchanged—something that will become very clear later.
Three Steps to Turn Active into Passive
To change an active sentence into a passive one, just remember these three steps:
- Step 1: Move the "object" of the active sentence to the beginning of the sentence to act as the new subject.
- Step 2: Change the verb to "be + past participle," with the tense of the "be" verb matching the original sentence.
- Step 3: If the original "subject" needs to be kept, put it at the end of the sentence, preceded by by.
Let's do a practical run. The active sentence is The teacher praised Tom.
- Step 1: Move the object Tom to the beginning of the sentence → Tom …
- Step 2: praised is past tense, so use was for the "be" verb, changing the verb to was praised → Tom was praised …
- Step 3: Keep the agent performing the action → Tom was praised by the teacher.
Done. Follow these three steps, and the passive sentence is complete.
Passive Voice Forms Across Different Tenses
The trickiest part about the passive voice for many is that the "be" verb looks different in different tenses. Actually, the pattern is quite simple: the past participle never changes, only the "be" verb changes its clothes to match the tense.
Using the verb make (make → made), let's look at a comparison chart:
- Present Simple: This bag is made in Japan.
- Past Simple: The bag was made last year.
- Future: The bag will be made next month.
- Present Continuous: The bag is being made now.
- Present Perfect: The bag has been made already.
- Modal Verbs: The bag can be made quickly.
Do you see the pattern? No matter how the tense changes, made always stays at the end, while the front simply changes among is, was, will be, is being, has been, and can be. Once you master the "be" verb slot, you've understood more than half of the passive voice.
A common mistake in the continuous passive is that many people leave out being:
- The road is being repaired. ✓ (The road is being fixed; the action is in progress.)
The road is being repair.✗ (repair was not changed to the past participle; it should be repaired.)
To express "being repaired," you need the "be" verb followed by being, and then the past participle repaired—none of these three components can be missing.
When to Use the Passive Voice
Once you know the formula, the more important thing is "under what circumstances to use it." In the following three situations, the passive voice is the most natural.
Scenario 1: The agent is not important. You care about the result, not who did it.
- English is spoken here. Who speaks it doesn't matter; the point is that English is used here.
Scenario 2: The agent is unknown. You can't find or don't need to point out the person doing the action.
- My bike was stolen last night. Who is the thief? We don't know, so we use the passive.
Scenario 3: The agent is obvious, and mentioning them would be redundant. Everyone knows who did it.
- The thief was arrested. Of course, it was the police who did the arresting, so there's no need to mention it.
A handy rule of thumb: Ask yourself, "Is the focus of this sentence on 'who did it' or 'what was done'?" If the focus is on "what was done," use the passive.
Do You Really Need to Add "by"?
Many learners struggle with whether to write by. The rule is actually very clear: only add by when you want to specify "who the agent is" and when this information is valuable.
Cases where you add by usually involve an agent who is important or worth mentioning:
- Hamlet was written by Shakespeare. The author is important and needs to be stated.
Cases where by is omitted are the three scenarios mentioned above: the agent is not important, unknown, or too obvious.
- The window was broken. Who broke it is unknown, so by is omitted directly.
Test Method: Cover up the part after by and read the sentence again. If the meaning is complete and you don't feel like anything is missing, then the by phrase can be removed.
How to Practice on Loopy
The difficulty of the passive voice lies in "correctly reacting to the 'be' verb instantly when encountering different tenses." This kind of reflex needs to be built through a large number of real-life sentences. Loopy places the passive voice in real contexts such as news, instructions, and conversations, allowing you to naturally encounter sentence patterns like was built, is being made, and has been done again and again through listening, speaking, and shadowing, training your intuition for pairing past participles with the "be" verb.
When you encounter unfamiliar irregular past participles, you can look up their three forms and pronunciation directly in the dictionary; the sentence patterns you have learned will reappear through memory curve review just as you are about to forget them, helping you commit them to memory. The graded courses from A1 to B2 will also guide you step-by-step from the present simple passive all the way to the perfect and continuous passive, ensuring you take every step steadily.
Not sure which level is right for you to start with? Take a few minutes to test yourself and let Loopy help you find the best starting point.