Help me teach about passive voice.

[egao_gakari]

We use Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind (third and final year) and my DD13 is very, very good at most grammar concepts. But this coming week is Active and Passive Voice week and I'm dreading it because this has been her bete noire every single year since we started talking about it. It's covered in the Copia exercises in WWS as well, and she always gets it wrong. She just can't identify a passive, and she can't take an active and change it into a passive or vice versa. Here's what she does:

Cocoa was harvested by Aztecs and turned into a delicious drink. --> Cocoa is the thing that was harvested by Aztecs and turned into a delicious drink.
The wilderness guide helped the hikers navigate the treacherous mountain path. --> Hikers navigated the treacherous mountain path with the wilderness guide's help.

So she can rephrase a sentence, sometimes clumsily, sometimes well, but never actually simply takes the passive and makes it active, or vice versa. She does other things to the sentence, either as well as or instead of changing the voice.

In the past, I've suggested that she picture the scene in her head and describe it in her own words, and I've taught her the rule that you take the direct object and make it the subject, or take the subject and turn it into the direct object, which were both methods that helped her brother figure it out. But for her, those methods resulted in sentences transformed as you see above. Any ideas?

[Miss Tick]

Simpler sentences, maybe? Start with a grammar drill? Identify who is doing the action in the following sentences -

The coffee was spilled.

The little brother was pinched.

The chocolate was eaten by someone who needed it.

Also, the cocoa sentence that she rewrote is still in passive voice.  It sounds like you have done a lot of work on this topic. Maybe just drill a bunch of sentences where she has to identify the agent doing the action. Also, I would (have to remind myself to) not get too stressed if she never got this one topic never got smooth, as long as she isn't using passive voice willy-nilly in her own writing.

Edited September 12, 2020 by SusanC
clarity is not always a strong point for me

[Little Green Leaves]

I would focus first on identifying the verb. Ask her what the action in the sentence is -- in your example, harvest. Then, identify the subject by figuring out who is doing that action (the Aztecs). (Yes, I know the verb is complicated in this case, but if you guys are already struggling I would keep it simple.)

I agree with Susan that it makes sense to start with simple sentences, too. Then I would prompt her really explicitly, like:

The coffee was spilled by John. -- what's the action word in that sentence? (spilled)

Who spilled the coffee? (John)

Then, rewrite the sentence in active voice: John spilled the coffee.

Honestly I think grammar books make this kind of thing way harder than it has to be, especially when they teach kids weird ideas like "the noun is what the sentence is about". I think focusing on the verb makes things a lot easier.

Edited September 12, 2020 by Little Green Leaves

[Matryoshka]

3 hours ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I would focus first on identifying the verb. Ask her what the action in the sentence is -- in your example, harvest. Then, identify the subject by figuring out who is doing that action (the Aztecs). (Yes, I know the verb is complicated in this case, but if you guys are already struggling I would keep it simple.)

I agree with Susan that it makes sense to start with simple sentences, too. Then I would prompt her really explicitly, like:

The coffee was spilled by John. -- what's the action word in that sentence? (spilled)

Who spilled the coffee? (John)

Then, rewrite the sentence in active voice: John spilled the coffee.

Honestly I think grammar books make this kind of thing way harder than it has to be, especially when they teach kids weird ideas like "the noun is what the sentence is about". I think focusing on the verb makes things a lot easier.

This. 

Also, the above rewrites you included show she doesn't understand how the verbs are conjugated.  The passive voice is conjugated/formed with to be + past participle.  The verb in the passive voice is 'was harvested'.  The action is to harvest; the verb in that sentence is not 'to be'.  Asking the question "what is the action in this sentence?" and then "who is doing the action?" is a much better way of figuring this out. 

[gaff]

with passive voice, the subject (if it is explicit) will always be set off in a prepositional phrase beginning with "by". so if it is possible to add the prepositional phrase to the predicate and have it make sense ("mistakes were made"..."by the man") then you have a passive. 

for your example of changing a passive to an active, i would focus on the "by" prepositional phrase (ablative of agent to use a latin grammatical phrase). can the noun in the "by" prepositional phrase be used as the subject? does it make sense to "put it at the front of the sentence" (to put it basically).

[Lori D.]

Totally agree with previous posters about working with very short, simple sentences -- "Cocoa was harvested by Aztecs and turned into a delicious drink" is a very hard sentence to figure out for a student because there is a compound action:  harvested AND turned. 😵  I think there is the potential of causing some big confusions here that could slop over into her own writing, so I would set this concept aside.

But even more: I especially would not spend time on learning how to turn active voice into passive voice, because that is the *opposite* of what you want to train and model in the student's own writing. 😉 Recognizing passive voice (a weaker sentence structure) and turning it into active voice is something you do in the revision stage of Writing. It does not have to be done in isolation in a Grammar program if the student isn't getting it, or if the way it is being taught in the Grammar program is confusing to the student.

Side note: passive voice shows up most often in a student's writing when the student is trying to avoid writing in 1st or 2nd person (as formal essays other than narrative essays usually need to be written in 3rd person).

Edited September 13, 2020 by Lori D.

[73349]

The passive voice is used most appropriately when we don't know (or don't want to say) a subject that would let us use the active voice.

The bank was robbed at about 1 PM.

If we knew who did it, that would solve the crime, and we would say "_________________ robbed the bank at about 1 PM."

If you know who did it, you should use the active voice.

 

[EKS]

Lead her through it by first asking her who is doing the action.  Then tell her to start with that. So for the sentence: Cocoa was harvested by Aztecs and turned into a delicious drink, ask her who is doing the action. The Aztecs. Now tell her to start with the Aztecs. What were the Aztecs doing? They were harvesting and turning. What were they harvesting and turning? The cocoa.

Lead her through several sentences in this way until she gets it.

Also I agree with the others about simplifying the sentences at first.

And one other thing--there is nothing inherently wrong with using the passive voice. There are lots of reasons why an author might choose to use it, all of which are perfectly legitimate.

[daijobu]

If it helps you can also tell your student that in my household, we often strategically deploy passive voice to deflect blame for bad things.  

"I put away the dishes!"

"A glass was broken."  

[Violet Crown]

My 2 cents, YMMV:

Avoid saying anything at all about "what is doing the action," "what the sentence is about," or the subject or object of the verb. Let not those words pass your lips. Talk about what is first in the sentence; and what is before the verb, and what is after the verb.

1. "The man bit the dog." Transform the sentence to passive by reversing the positions of "the man" and "the dog," without changing the meaning.

--> "The dog was bitten by the man."

Do these transformations with a zillion sentences. Let the student notice* that "the man" (or whatever was first in the sentence) has to have the extra words "by" or "with" in the passive voice (but don't confuse things by talking about prepositional phrases**).

Let the student notice* that passive voice sentences can get by without "by the man" or "with a pencil" or whatever used to be at the beginning of the sentence and is now at the end of the sentence.

2. When the student can do transformations from {noun phrase 1} {active verb} {noun 2} to {noun 2} {passive verb} {prep. + noun 1} easily, make her do transformations the other direction.

3. When transformations in both direction are easy, give her some passive sentences with no {prep. + noun 1} to transform into active sentences, supplying her own subject.

*with perhaps some Socratic guidance

**or, God forbid, the ablative case. Though this is how our Latin curriculum teaches passive voice and ablative: transformations until you can do them in your sleep. "Elephantus non capit murem." "Mus elephanto non capitur." "Quis non capit murem?" "A quo mus non capitur?" &c. &c.