Talking about completed actions in English How using passive and active voice
it’s rolling hi everybody and welcome
back to our weekly
live stream my name is alicia and in
this week’s lesson we are going to talk
about
how to use active and passive for
completed actions so a lot of people ask
about the differences between
active voice and passive voice and when
to use them
so we’re going to review this topic a
little bit today
and i’m going to focus on a lot of
examples that you can use in everyday
life
in a lot of different situations work
situations
home situations and so on i’m going to
share an active sentence and a passive
sentence and we’re going to talk about
the differences between the two
and why you might want to choose one
more than the other
so i hope this will be a really helpful
lesson for lots and lots of people
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welcome uh victor conway rendell pedro
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take a look
at today then here are today’s lesson
boards this is what we’re going to cover
today so active voice and passive voice
for completed action
so we are going to look first what is
active voice what is passive voice
then we’re going to look at a lot of
example sentences
and many different situations and we’re
going to
compare the differences between active
voice and
passive voice in those cases okay so
if you have questions like should i use
active here
or what’s why should i use passive here
please send those uh in the chat and
we’ll practice
some people are saying the sound isn’t
great i’ve gotten that message a couple
times let me know remote control
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fix it okay
let’s go to the first part of today’s
lesson
then so active voice or passive voice
also if you have not please make sure to
like this video and share
so other people can find today’s lesson
okay let’s begin so first active voice
passive voice what is this let’s talk
about the differences between these
it’s a little bit dark yeah okay let’s
talk about the differences between
active voice and passive voice
first active voice let’s begin what is
active voice
here are three example sentences first i
opened
the door active voice my roommate
ate the last cookie or
you stole my idea okay
these sentences are all active
voice sentences so what’s active voice
for
what what is happening here in each
sentence
here the subject is the person
doing the action in this case i opened
the door
so i know the person who opened the door
me so that’s the subject of the sentence
in this sentence my roommate h the last
cookie
my roommate the person who did the
action
is the subject of the sentence okay then
you stole my idea so the person stealing
you in this case is the subject of the
sentence
okay so we use active voice
when you want to focus
on the person doing the action like in
these sentences
the person doing the action is important
or when you know who did the action so
you need to know the person in most
cases
who did the action and when you want to
be
clear about who did
what so when you’re talking about
responsibility
or maybe you’re planning something and
it’s very important
to be clear like you should do this you
should do that and so on
when you want to be very clear about
roles and responsibilities
you can use active voice to do that so
the subject of your sentence
is the person doing the action okay
so this is why uh these are the reasons
we use active voice active voice
okay the person who does the action is
important yes javier
okay good good good um
all right i think those are all the
questions why is active voice is david
moreno do you mean
why is it called active voice
maybe maybe that’s the question why is
it called active voice
because the person acting you could this
may be
you can help this can help you remember
the person acting the person doing the
action
is the subject of the sentence maybe
that can help you to remember
okay um good okay i don’t see other
questions so
let’s compare this to passive voice now
so passive voice what is passive voice
again let’s look at example sentences
these sentences are the passive versions
of these sentences so here passive voice
the door was opened the door
was opened or the last cookie
was eaten the last cookie was eaten
and my idea was stolen my idea was
stolen so
these sentences have the same basic
idea as these sentences right the
difference with these sentences is the
subject here
the subject is the door or the last
cookie
or my idea right in these sentences the
focus
is the person doing the action in
passive voice sentences
the focus is on the thing receiving
the action okay so why do we use passive
voice why do we need to do this
we use passive voice when you want to
focus on the thing receiving
the action you want to focus on the
thing receiving the action
like the door was opened who opened the
door
maybe we don’t know okay or you don’t
know who did the action
or it’s not important you don’t know
who did the action or it’s not important
for example the last cookie was eaten
who ate the last cookie
i don’t know or maybe i think it was my
roommate
but i’m not sure okay so you don’t know
who did it
or it’s not important finally
when you want to hide the doer
of the action you want to hide the doer
of the action
so like my idea was stolen someone
someone did it who did it i don’t know
or maybe you want to keep a secret
for someone else you can use passive
voice to do that
okay so these are the differences
between
active voice and passive voice in
today’s lesson
i am not going to talk about how to make
these
i have some lessons i have a lot of
lessons
actually about how to make active and
passive voice so i’m not going to talk
about that today
but you can search our lesson archives
to find some information
so today i’m going to use a lot of
examples we’re going to compare
lots of examples of these two
uh so you can i hope make better
decisions
about when to use active and when to use
passive
in your daily life like at school or at
work or
at home okay cool so that’s part one for
today let’s take a quick break and then
we’ll go to
part two i’ll check your questions in
the live chat
lots of you are sending examples these
look good um
my smartphone was stolen by someone says
selma good
okay kanalji says he was betrayed by his
own best friend
good uh norah thank you very nice
comments as well
uh the students were asked to come
earlier good examples everybody
uh priyanka says please teach us how to
use that with
modal verbs ah i’m not going to cover
that
today um but maybe i can include that in
a lesson in the future modal verbs with
passive voice or something
we’ll see okay uh yeah thanks for the
idea okay i don’t see other questions so
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okay let’s go to part two for today’s
lesson
also if you haven’t please make sure to
hit the like button
so other people can find this lesson and
share
too yeah okay let’s go to
part two and part three really so
next the the part two and part three for
today
uh are going to focus on lots of
examples we’re going to compare
the active and passive versions of
sentences
and explain why you might want to use
one more than the other okay so
let’s take a look so i’ve put
to explain this i’ve put in black the
situation
so a sample situation you can think
about
and then in blue will be active voice
in red will be passive voice so we’re
going to compare them
and talk about why you should choose one
okay so for example if you are
at work or at school or maybe home
after you finish a task after you finish
a task a task is some responsibility
something
you need to do after you finish a task
like a report maybe you write a report
active voice
is i finished the report i finished the
report you could write an
email or tell your manager passive voice
the report was finished the report was
finished okay
so when should you use active when
should you use passive
both are 100 correct both express the
same idea
an active voice sentence here
uh communicates i did this thing so if
it’s important to you
to express that you like you want the
credit you want to show
responsibility for this task you can use
active voice to do that if
it’s not so important to explain who
made the report
if it’s like just a regular task or
somehow maybe
it was part of a team effort maybe you
can say
the report was finished or maybe if
you’re worried about the report
if there’s something bad in the report
you could say the report was finished
and try to remove yourself from the
statement
okay so again both are correct
but i finished the report is like look
at me i did this thing
that’s the difference okay then
let’s go to the next one i’m looking for
your questions too if you have questions
send them in the chat i’ll try to check
live okay next one how about
when you have not finished a task
yet so maybe you expect to finish a task
but it’s not done yet active voice
you can say i have not finished
the report yet so yet you can include i
haven’t finished the report
or haven’t finished the report yet
passive voice
the report has not been finished
yet the report has not been finished yet
okay so when should i use this
again when you want to show your
responsibility
i have not finished the report yet it’s
me
i am the reason the report is not done
you can use active voice so if you want
to take responsibility
you can use active voice here i have not
finished the report yet
okay passive voice then the report has
not been finished yet
oh okay but i don’t mention me
in this sentence just the report has not
been finished yet
so my responsibility is maybe not so
clear
so this is a great example of a
situation where we tend to choose
passive we tend to choose passive more
in kind of negative situations like i
didn’t finish something
or i broke something or i maybe caused a
problem
when we want to kind of hide
from the responsibility a little bit we
use
passive voice to do that with our words
so
the report has not been finished yet
it’s totally true
and i but i don’t want to make it clear
that it’s my
fault okay so this is a situation where
we might
use passive okay
all right uh okay i don’t see other
questions so i’m gonna continue
next one when you’re working in a team
so in a team at school or in a team
at work or hobby team let’s say your
team when your team
creates something great when your team
creates something great like a new
product for example
okay so active voice our team
is the subject our team made an
incredible
product so incredible means very very
good amazing excellent
our team made an incredible
product passive an incredible product
was made incredible product was made
okay so what’s the difference here
in this sentence in this pair our team
is the focus
in the active sentence so if you are
trying to create a good
team environment like uh everybody is
working together
you want to give your team a compliment
or you want to note
your team’s great work you can use
active voice
to do that our team made an incredible
product
if however you want to use this sentence
an incredible product
was made you don’t want to focus on your
team
you want to focus on the product so
maybe
you’ve seen a sentence like this on like
uh sales website so like on a smartphone
product information sheet yeah the focus
is on the product right not the person
not the group of people who made it so
this is the nuance indifference between
active voice
and passive voice okay
[Music]
oh david moreno says active voice and
passive voice only when you’re talking
about the past
no no not only when you’re talking about
the past in today’s lesson yes i’m
focusing on active voice and passive
voice
for complete completed actions okay
all right uh john carlo how do we know
for sure if it’s passive or active also
happy birthday how do you know it’s my
birthday
that’s amazing uh active passive voice
or active voice
um i’m not talking about the differences
between the two
today uh but look for that was
and uh let’s see where’s it here
uh was plus verb so like in this oh this
is a bad example
was made this before your verb here this
is a good sign
of passive voice yeah i have a lot of
videos about that on the channel
but that’s a quick hint okay uh
okay let’s go to the next part um
all right the next one is this one oh
very very important one here the next
situation
when someone makes a mistake when
someone
makes a mistake so you or another person
for example alicia wrote the wrong
information
in the spreadsheet alicia wrote the
wrong information
in the spreadsheet what’s a spreadsheet
a spreadsheet is
if you know excel excel files that
those documents are called spreadsheets
okay
alicia wrote the wrong information in
the spreadsheet active voice
passive voice the wrong information
was written in the spreadsheet so
the difference in the active voice
sentence i’m saying
it was alicia alicia wrote the wrong
information in the spreadsheet
oh no it was her i saw her so i’m very
direct right it was you
in this sentence the wrong information
was written in the spreadsheet
it’s like maybe i don’t know who did it
or i know it was alicia but i
don’t want to make her feel bad so
you can use this to express i noticed a
problem
i want to express the problem but it’s
not important to say
it was you so much less direct
okay all right
um okay so this is the first
part uh virginia prada says can i say
an incredible product has been made yeah
that’s totally correct an incredible
product has been made sure
that’s grammatically correct okay uh
priyantha says can we watch this lesson
again on your youtube channel yes
this video is being broadcast live on
youtube and facebook at the same
time so you can watch after as well
okay um good i’ll take one more short
break
and then we’ll go to the last group of
examples
the last group is just three example
situations
i included some kind of interesting
expressions
that are kind of common that we’ll talk
about so
quickly if you missed it there is free
stuff for you from the link below the
video
if you’re watching on youtube or above
the video if you’re watching
on facebook uh these pdfs
you can use to practice vocabulary and
phrases check them out so if you haven’t
checked
yeah if you haven’t checked in a while
please have a look
uh the team is adding new stuff all the
time
like i can’t keep track there’s a bunch
of new stuff for conversations
uh and like everyday survival
expressions too so check it out
okay so i want to go to part three i’ll
say
if you haven’t please make sure to hit
the like button and share this video
so other people can find today’s lesson
okay um other question
yeah people are how do i get that yeah
check the link
if you’re on youtube ahmed go to the
link below the video
in the youtube description okay
let’s go to the last part of today’s
lesson the final part
i included some kind of interesting
expressions that you might not
understand at first so let’s cover these
this situation very useful when you want
to
ask someone or someone asks you
about a task an errand an assignment
whatever ojn thanks very much on youtube
um so when you want to ask someone
for an update about something like let’s
look at this short conversation here
hey says any updates on my dinner
reservation
so a asked b to make a dinner
reservation
yeah please make a dinner reservation a
wants information
they want to know about updates are
there any updates
on my dinner reservation b says
active or passive which one should i
choose ah so
active voice is i took care of it i
took care of it do you know this part to
take
care of something to take care of
something means like to be nice to
something like your pet
to give it food but it also means to
complete
a task to take care of something yeah
b could also say passive voice
it’s been taken care of it’s been taken
care of which means the task
has been completed who did it
maybe it was me so i included this one
right here
this sentence it’s been taken care of
because
you see this expression a lot in movies
especially
action movies if you like action movies
often
like the bad guy will ask his team to do
something bad like
hurt somebody or steal something or get
secret information
whatever when it’s finished sometimes
the team member will say ah it’s been
taken
care of why do they use passive voice in
that sentence
in like an action movie why like it’s
been taken care of there’s no
i did it there’s no responsibility they
just want to report
that task is done it’s completed so
this is a very common expression uh
in media that you might hear okay
all right um ansarullah
says can i say the story was written by
ali yes you can
okay um lots of people were saying happy
birthday thanks very much everybody
thanks okay uh let’s go to the next
situation we just have
two more next one i included here
is about food so when you’re eating
something
and or drinking something and you want
to comment
you want to share some comment about the
food or about the cooking
how can you do that so active voice
maybe
you cooked something and you think uh i
used too much salt
i used too much salt it’s my fault it
was me
passive voice you can say too much salt
was used too much salt was used okay
i included a note right here
in a sentence like this you might hear
like when you go to a restaurant native
speakers use
they as the subject like the sentence
so this note says they is sometimes used
as the subject
to make an active sentence like this
they use
too much salt this they
we use when we don’t know the specific
person
for example when you go to a restaurant
and you don’t know
exactly who did something but
you want to talk about the restaurant
generally
we use they to do that instead of
this restaurant used too much salt or
this place used too much salt
we use they they to do that
so you might hear this as an active
voice
sentence again because the speaker wants
to emphasize
uh that the restaurant okay
um all right everybody sorry
no more questions now everybody’s just
writing nice messages okay
let’s go to our last one then your last
one when your internet connection dies
i want to end with a computer expression
because computers
uh use a lot of passive voice
notifications
okay so when your internet connection
dies when your internet connection
dies so your internet goes out what
happened
active voice your computer uh i’m sorry
my computer
lost its connection my computer lost its
connection
active voice passive voice the
connection
was lost the connection was lost so
this one in this sentence you expressed
it was the computer the computer was the
problem
passive voice we don’t know exactly what
the problem was maybe it was my computer
maybe it was my network we don’t know
okay
but note here last note for today
computer notifications
often use passive so short messages
are very common like connection lost
or file saved or database updated
these kinds of things so passive is used
a lot
with computers if you use your computer
in english which is a great way to study
by the way you will probably see these
something like this
every day okay all right
good so these are a few uh situations
where you might think about the
differences between active
and passive i know it seems kind of
simple
but making good choices between active
and passive
really helps you in making good
relationships with people like you put
you can protect
other people’s feelings in difficult
times you can take responsibility
in positive times so it’s really
important to know how to choose
uh between the two it will help you
sound a lot more fluent
okay all right great so i have to finish
up there i think yes it is time for me
to go
so i’ll show you next week’s lesson
information oh
once more too here’s today’s lesson
boards if you want to take a look take a
screenshot for them
we talked about active voice and passive
voice the difference
we talked about a lot of situations
where you need to choose between active
and passive
and a couple of common examples uh
that you might hear like uh the last one
i talked about the action movie it’s
been taken care of
okay thanks everybody for all the nice
birthday messages i really appreciate it
that’s super super nice okay
someone wrote a passive voice your
birthday is being commemorated awesome
thank you everybody that’s super super
nice
uh i have to go but i’ll be back next
week
next week’s lesson next week will be
april
14th wednesday april 14 10 p.m
eastern standard time new york city time
if you don’t know your local time please
google it or you can set a notification
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always post a link and a topic reminder
in my story so check that out you can
find the link for my instagram or
from the link below the video in the
youtube description
next week i’m going to talk about
quantities how to talk about
quantities we’re going to practice using
too much
too many not enough enough those kinds
of things
we’re going to cover um this topic that
comes up every day a super super common
topic so please join me again
next week for this lesson okay so
i have to go for this week but thank you
very very much for joining me thank you
for all your great
example sentences and your great
questions
i will say goodbye uh thanks for all the
birthday messages that’s super super
nice of you
enjoy the rest of your day enjoy