Help with the Active and Passive Voice of Verbs

Here are tips on using the active and passive voice from Simple Steps to Sentence Sense.

Whenever possible, use verbs in the active voice. The passive voice is weak and uses unnecessary words. 

“A captain has been appointed by the team” 

is weaker than 

“The team has appointed a captain.”  

Sentences with verbs in the passive voice use "is, am, are, was, were, be, or been" as a helping verb with the past participle. Sentences in the passive voice often contain the preposition “by.”

To change a sentence into the active voice do the following:

• Remove the form of the to be helping verb. Be sure to keep the tense of the verb the same as it was.
• Remove the word by. 
• Flip the ends of the sentence.

Step 2 in SimpleSteps to Sentence Sense is all about finding the verb and the verb phrase.

Click here to watch a video explaining Step 2.

Once your students master the use of the verb in a sentence, they will become better writers.

Click here for a complete unit on verbs that will make it easy for your students to use them correctly.

Click here to access a mini-lesson from pages from the All About Verbs exercise that you can assign in Google Drive. Click here to access the answers to the exercise.

Thanks for reading,

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