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The passive in English – tips and activities
By Kerry G. Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield
Type: Reference material
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Tips and ideas from Kerry Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield on teaching the passive in English.
Activity: Variations on quizzes (elementary to advanced)
The passive is a favourite grammar area to use for quizzes. In coursebooks, these are often 'general knowledge quizzes'.
A variation on this would be to design a 'themed' quiz. For example:
Entertainment Quiz: Books, Movies, Music and Art
1. Who was … written by?
2. Who was … directed by?
3. Which film was awarded the Oscar for best picture in …?
4. Who was … played by in the movie …?
5. Who was … composed by?
6. Who was … sung by?
7. Who was … painted by?
8. This will generate lots of examples of the past passive.
9. Geography Quiz or History Quiz
10. Where is … grown/cultivated/harvested?
11. What country is surrounded by …?
12. Where is … made?
13. Who was … discovered by?
14. In which country was … invented?
15. When was … invented?
A geography quiz will generate lots of examples of the present passive, while the history quiz will generate examples of
the past passive.
The natural follow-up to any quiz like those above would be to ask the students to make a quiz themselves.
Activity: Changes (lower intermediate to intermediate)

To elicit the passive, any number of activities involving the students talking about changes can be used. Here are some
examples.
Changes in your town (present perfect passive)

Write down some changes in the town where you live over the past fifty years, e.g. A new hospital has been built.
Include things that haven’t been changed, but that you would like to see changed, e.g. The new sports stadium still
hasn’t been opened.
Changes in the classroom (present perfect passive)

Ask a student or students to leave the room. Make some changes in the classroom, e.g. knock some books onto the
floor, turn the lights out, erase the board, etc. Ask the students to come back into the room and guess what has been
changed.
Changes in your life (past passive or passive with used to)

Write the following words up on the board: call, blame, punish, teach. Ask the students to think about when they were
children. They should write sentences in the past passive, or used to passive with these verbs. For example:
When I was eight years old …
 I was called Chuckie.
 I was taught to listen in class and never question the teacher.
 I always used to be blamed for hitting my little brother.
Activity: The work tour
If you are teaching English for specific purposes, or English for business and are teaching in your students’ workplace,
the tour of where they work can generate a lot of passives. Ask students to prepare a tour of their workplace. Provide
them with questions to help elicit the passive voice. For example:
 Where are the major decisions made?
 Where is most of the work done?
 Where are the supplies kept?
Activity: Scientific experiments
Because a high quantity of passives occur in scientific texts, try bringing some simple ones in for students to analyse. The
website Popular Science (www.popsci.com) is one possible source, or look at the Science section of any news website to
find out about recent experiments.
A more creative exercise for general English classes would be for students to role play scientists, presenting the results of
certain 'crazy' experiments. They would write up their mock experiments first, and then present them orally to each
other.
Activity: In the news
Go to any news website and look for news stories that have examples of the passive. Put together three or four of these
on a worksheet. Ask students to 1) find and underline the passives and 2) speculate why the passive is used there.
A variation on this activity would be to find an interesting news story (again, with examples of the passive in it) and give
students a number of key words from the story (include at least one passive). Ask students to write what they think the
news story is about, then compare with the original. Then analyze the differences. Did the students use active voice or
passive voice more?
Activity: It is said
To practise the passive form of reporting verbs, you could do one of the following activities.
Five bizarre things

Ask students to think of five bizarre facts about the town they live or a place they know (they could do this for
homework). These could be strange historical facts, legends about local people, scary stories … Prepare five yourself
about a place that you know to give them an example. Ask them to write out each fact, but starting with one of the
following constructions:
 It is believed that …
 It is said that …
 It is claimed that …
 Ask students to exchange their bizarre facts.
Activity: The rumour mill
This kind of activity works best with a class who all get along quite well. Ask students to write down their name on a
small piece of paper. Collect the papers, then redistribute them so that everyone has a new name. The students must
not say whose name they now have. Ask them to invent a rumour about that person and write it down on the piece of
paper. For example: Ivan was wearing high heeled shoes; Daniela had dinner with a tall handsome stranger. Then collect
all the papers again. At the end of class, tell the students that they are going to hear what the “rumour mill” is saying
about them. Ask a student to pull out a paper and to read the rumour out loud, prefacing it with: It is said that … The
student about whom the rumour was written must defend himself/herself and give an explanation.
Activity: Active vs passive in writing: which is better?
If you are working with upper intermediate or advanced classes and reviewing the passive, you could point out that the
passive voice is often a source of much controversy in English writing. In 1946, English writer George Orwell said “Never
use the passive where the active is possible.” While this is perhaps going too far, many guides to clear writing
recommend that people should use active over passive constructions wherever possible. Why is this? Because if a writer
overuses the passive, it makes things much more confusing. This is particularly prevalent in legal documents and official
documents. Show the students the following two texts (from a financial advisor to her client) and ask them which one
they think is clearer:
We have been asked by your home insurers to obtain your written confirmation that all their requirements have been
completed by yourself.
Your home insurers have asked us to obtain your written confirmation that you have completed all the documents.
Did they prefer the second one? That’s what the Oxford Guide to Plain English (1999) also recommends (where the
example was cited from).
Similarly, university students are discouraged from overusing constructions such as It is believed that …Why? Because it
could mean that they don’t know who believes it or said it. This kind of information might be important in academic
writing. Students should be able to use the passive effectively in their own writing, but be very careful not to overuse it.

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The passive in English – tips and activities

By Kerry G. Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield

Type: Reference material

Activity: Variations on quizzes (elementary to advanced)

Entertainment Quiz: Books, Movies, Music and Art

1. Who was … written by?

2. Who was … directed by?

3. Which film was awarded the Oscar for best picture in …?

4. Who was … played by in the movie …?

5. Who was … composed by?

6. Who was … sung by?

7. Who was … painted by?

8. This will generate lots of examples of the past passive.

9. Geography Quiz or History Quiz

10. Where is … grown/cultivated/harvested?

11. What country is surrounded by …?

12. Where is … made?

13. Who was … discovered by?

14. In which country was … invented?

15. When was … invented?

Activity: Changes (lower intermediate to intermediate)

Changes in your town (present perfect passive)

Changes in the classroom (present perfect passive)

Changes in your life (past passive or passive with used to)

When I was eight years old …

 I was called Chuckie.

 I was taught to listen in class and never question the teacher.

 I always used to be blamed for hitting my little brother.

Activity: The work tour

 Where are the major decisions made?

 Where is most of the work done?

 Where are the supplies kept?

Activity: Scientific experiments

Activity: In the news

Five bizarre things

 Ask students to exchange their bizarre facts.

Activity: The rumour mill

Activity: Active vs passive in writing: which is better?

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