Active & Passive Voice | English Grammar for Class 9 PDF Download

Introduction

• Active voice: In a sentence written in the active voice, the subject performs the action.
• Passive voice: In a sentence written in the passive voice, the subject receives the action.

Formation of Active and Passive Voice Sentences

• Active voice: Subject + Verb + Object
  Example: The cat caught the mouse.
• Passive voice: Object + Verb (past participle) + Subject (optional)
  Example: The mouse was caught by the cat.

Voice

• Football was played by Mohan.

Here the subject is ‘football’ which was ‘object’ in the active sentence. So here something is done to the subject ‘football’, i.e. it suffers the action done by something or someone.

Rules for the Change of Voice

• The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the verb in the passive voice. The preposition ‘by’ is put before it.
• The main verb of the active sentence changes into the past participle.
• The form of the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were, being, been) is placed before the main verb according to the tense.
• The auxiliary verb is changed according to the new subject in number and person.

 Changes in Pronouns

1. Change in tenses from Active voice to Passive voice:

2. Change of  Voice in the Simple Present:

3. Past Simple Tense

4. Simple Future

5. Present Progressive

6. Past Progressive

7. Present Perfect Tense

8. Past Perfect Tense

9. Future Perfect Tense

Imperative Sentences

Imperative sentences express command/order, request, suggestion, etc. While changing imperative sentences into the passive voice, we use verbs like advise, request, order, etc.

Interrogative Sentence

Modal Auxiliaries

The form of the passive sentences will be: modal + be + past participle:

Prepositional Verbs

Quasi-Passive

Miscellaneous Examples

Common Errors and Exceptions

• Intransitive verbs (verbs that do not take an object) cannot be changed into the passive voice.
• Some verbs have different structures in the active and passive voices.
• The passive voice is not used when the doer of the action is unknown or unimportant.