passive voice
Tense Subject Verb Object
Active: Nancy Makes tea.
Simple Present
Passive: Tea is made by Nancy.
Present Active: Nancy is making tea.
Progressive Passive: Tea is being made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy Made tea.
Simple Past
Passive: Tea was made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy was making tea.
Past Progressive
Passive: Tea was being made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy has made Tea.
Present Perfect
Passive: Tea has been made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy had made tea.
Past Perfect
Passive: Tea had been made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy will make tea.
Future simple
Passive: Tea will be made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy will have made tea.
Future perfect
Passive: Tea will have been made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy would make tea.
Conditional
Passive: Tea would be made by Nancy.
Active: Nancy can make tea.
Modals
Passive: Tea can be made by Nancy.
Passive voice sentences with two Objects:
Rewriting an active sentence with two objects in passive voice means that one of the two
objects becomes the subject, the other one remains an object. Which object to transform into a
subject depends on what you want to put the focus on.
Active/Passive Subject Verb Object 1 Object 2
Active: Nancy offered a flower to me.
Passive: A flower was offered to me by Nancy.
Passive: I was offered
Adjectives
What are adjectives?
1. An adjective is a word which modifies a noun or a pronoun. In the example below:
He's got a beautiful car
beautiful is an adjective modifying car (it gives more information about the noun car.)
2. Adjectives may come before a noun
He found a nice job
3. Adjectives may also come after certain verbs like be, feel, seem, look:
He is intelligent
I feel happy
She seems unhappy
They look fantastic
Adjectives versus adverbs
A distinction must be made between adjectives and adverbs.
1. An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun.
She lives in a big house.
2. An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb.
She sings well
Her house is very big
She did it really well
Comparatives and superlatives
Adjectives can be used for comparison:
New York is bigger than Paris.
This is the nicest student in the class.
Other noun modifiers
There are other noun modifiers which function very much like adjectives:
1. Nouns can function as adjectives. A noun can help describe an object.
A business meeting
2. Past participle can also be used to modify a noun
He was exhausted
The hidden secret
3. Compound adjectives are used to modify nouns. They are called compound because they
are made up of two or more words, usually with hyphens between them.
A heart-breaking news
An English-speaking country .
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What are adverbs?
An adverb is a word that modifies verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.
Adverbs vs Adjectives
The difference between an adverb and an adjective is the following:
An adjective modifies a noun.
Example:
"John is tall." (The adjective tall modifies the noun John)
An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb.
Examples:
"That idea is simply ridiculous." (The adverb simply modifies the
adjective ridiculous)
"She sings nicely." (The adverb nicely modifies the verb sing)
"She did it really well." (the adverb really modifies the adverb well)
Read the passage:
Mrs Smith immediately called the police when she saw the criminals assaulting the poor boy
aggressively. It was the most horrible scene that she had ever witnessed in her life. She had always
lived peacefully in that neighborhood. No one had ever disturbed her quiet nights there.
The words " immediately, aggressively, peacefully, ever, always, there" are adverbs.
What are the different types of adverbs?
Basically, most adverbs tell you how, in what way, when, where, and to what extent
something is done. In other words, they describe the manner, place, or time of an action.
Here are some examples:
He speaks quietly. ( quietly is an adverb of manner.)
I live here. (here is an adverb of place.)
We'll leave tomorrow . (tomorrow is an adverb of time.)
She never sleeps late . (never is an adverb of frequency.)
Adverb rules:
1. Regular adverbs:
Adverbs in English often end in -ly.
These adverbs are formed by adding -ly to the end of an adjective:
Adjective + ly
Examples:
Adjective Adverb
slow slowly
beautiful beautifully
careful carefully
violent violently
Spelling rules:
true → truly (the silent e is dropped and add ly)
happy → happily ( y becomes i and add ly.)
possible → possibly (e after a consonant is dropped and ly is added.)
full → fully (after ll and add y is added.)
fanatic → fanatically (after adjectives ending in -ic add -ally - there is an exception: public-
publicly)
2. Exceptions:
However, this is not the only way to form an adverb. Many adverbs do not end in -ly.
This is a list of adverbs that don't follow the rule:
Adjective Adverb
fast fast
hard hard
late late
early early
daily daily
Some adjectives change their form when they become adverbs:
adjective adverb
good well
3. Things to remember:
Many words are not adverbs although they end in -ly. Here are examples of adjectives that
end in -ly.
Examples:
a kindly teacher
a lonely girl
an elderly person
a friendly policeman
To decide whether a word is an adverb ask questions with how, where and when.
How does James speak Spanish? He speaks Spanish fluently.
Where do the kids play soccer? They play soccer here.
When did she write the email to her husband? She wrote the email immediately.
