Grammar

🔄 Passive Voice

Active → Passive transformation

Grammar

📖 Passive Voice

🔹 Active Voice

Subject + Verb + Object

"The cat ate the mouse."

🇲🇦 المبني للمعلوم

🔹 Passive Voice

Object + be + V3 + by + Subject

"The mouse was eaten by the cat."

🇲🇦 المبني للمجهول

📌 Formula

Passive = be (conjugated) + Past Participle (V3)

✏️ Practice

Transform to Passive Voice

1. The chef cooks the meal. → The meal by the chef.

2. The students wrote the essays. → The essays by the students.

3. The company will launch a new product. → A new product by the company.

MathMaroc · Learning guide

Passive voice: preserve tense and meaning

Original practice material · explained answers · no official-exam attribution

Understand the rule

The passive changes the focus of a sentence: an object of an active clause becomes the grammatical subject of a passive clause. Keep the tense and aspect of the original verb. Only verbs used with an object normally allow this transformation. The agent with by is optional when unknown, obvious or unimportant. A passive sentence still needs a correctly conjugated form of be and a past participle. Not every sentence containing be is passive: She is tired may describe a state.

Follow a method

Find the active subject, verb and object. Move the object into subject position. Conjugate be in the original tense and aspect, then add the past participle. Keep the original agent only when useful. Check agreement, negation and the meaning of time expressions.

Worked example

Present: They collect the books → The books are collected. Past: They collected the books → The books were collected. Present perfect: They have collected the books → The books have been collected. Future: They will collect the books → The books will be collected. Modal: They must collect the books → The books must be collected. Continuous: They are collecting the books → The books are being collected.

Practise and explain your answer

01Rewrite: Volunteers cleaned the beach yesterday.

The beach was cleaned by volunteers yesterday. Past simple: was + cleaned.

02Rewrite: Someone has repaired the computers.

The computers have been repaired. The unidentified agent may be omitted.

03Rewrite: The club will organise a debate.

A debate will be organised by the club.

04Can you passivise “The students arrived early”? Explain.

Not normally: arrived has no direct object here. There is no object to promote to subject.

05Correct: The reports was written.

The reports were written. Reports is plural.