Impersonal passive

Impersonal passive

Passive vs active

• Active voice: we focus on the subject of the action.

• Passive voice: the focus is on what/who receives the action.

Questions 1 & 2

Answer in your phone

Multiple Choice

Select active or passive:

The grapes are grown in California.

• Active

• Passive

Multiple Choice

Select active or passive:

The ship has left early. There's one tomorrow evening.

• Active

• Passive

Impersonal passive

It's a common way of reporting what is said by the general people or by an unspecified group of people 

How do we form it?

It + passive structure* + that

• *The passive structure should be as follows:

• be (conjugated: present, past, future... it depends)

• verb in past participle

• It is said that green tea helps you lose weight

It gives a more impersonal way to express ideas:

• People has believed that --> It has been* believed that+

• The economists calculated that --> It was* calculated that

• It is estimated that tourism will go back to normality until 2022.

We can use the following verbs to make impersonal passive sentences:

• agree / allege / announce / assume / believe

•  calculate / claim / consider / declare / discover

• estimate / expect / find / known / mention / propose

• recommend / rumour / show / suppose / suggest / understand

Questions 3 & 4

DO NOT use capital letters

Do you have any general questions?

Quiz time!

Be careful in your answers!

Multiple Choice

Select the option that makes this sentence impersonal:

They discovered the student plagiarised the essay.

_________ the student plagiarised the text.

• They are discovered

• It was discovered that

• It is discover that

Multiple Choice

People say hot lemon is one of the best remedies for sore throats

________ hot lemon is one of the best remedies for sore throats.

• They suggest

• It is suggested that

• It was suggest

Multiple Choice

Everybody thought he did not take the prize for political reasons.

________ he didn't take the prize for political reasons.

• It was assumed that

• People assume

• They assume that

Multiple Choice

All the experts in the congress thought that our wine was the best!

________ our wine was the best in the congress!

• It was claimed that

• They claim

• The experts claimed

That's all folks!

Homework: Akdmic

-Module 9

-Lesson 1 (ONLY)