2C English | U7 Passive Voice

​Present, past, future and modal perfect

By Claudia Cabrera

In a passive sentence, the subject is NOT the agent (the person or thing that does the action). The object of an active sentence becomes the subject of a passive sentence.

ACTIVE People have wiped out many species of animal.
PASIVE Many species of animal have been wiped out.

We construct all forms of the passive with be and the past participle. We can use the passive with any tense or structure that contains a verb.

Present tenses:
A lot of animals habitats are threatened by deforestation.
The fox is being chased by the hounds.

Present perfect tenses:
This area has been almost completely destroyed.
The behaviour of these butterflies has been being studied for some years.*

*It is unusual to use the passive with the present perfect continuous, because been being sounds strange. We normally use an active form for these situations:

People have been studying the behaviour of these butterflies for some years.

Past tenses:
We think this tiger was killed by disease.
When we arrived at the furm fam, the mink were being fed.

Past perfect tenses:
My dog had been vaccinated before our trip to France.
The trees had been being cut down all summer.*

*They had been cutting down the trees all summer. (ACTIVE)

Future tenses:
The golden eagle will be wiped out unless we do something now.
We're going to be taken on a tour of the sanctuary.
All the clothes will have been washed and ironed before we pack them.

Modals:
I think badgers should be protected by law.
Hunting with dogs must be banned in every country now.
The local wildlife might be threatened by the new power station.

Open Ended

Rewrite the sentence including the missing word.

Macaws valued as pets because they are grey and unintelligent.

Open Ended

Rewrite the sentence including the missing word.

The Iberian lynx seen as a threat by farmers.

Open Ended

Rewrite the sentence including the missing word.

Bears were often attacked travellers in southern Europe.

Open Ended

Rewrite the sentence including the missing word.

In recent years a lot of the rainforest has destroyed.

Open Ended

Rewrite the sentence including the missing word.

Whales have hunted for centuries.

Open Ended

Rewrite the sentence including the missing word.

People can sentenced to life imprisonment for killing pandas in China.

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Complete the article about the king of the mountains. Use the passive form of verbs in brackets.

The magnificent solitary snow leopard

(hunt) for hundreds of years for its beautiful fur.

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This threat

(reduce) in recent years, with the decrease in international fur trade, but there are fewer than 7,000 snow leopards left in the wild.

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The species

(still threaten) in other ways.

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Snow leopards

(often kill) by local farmers, for instance, because they prey on their sheep, goats, horses and yak calves.

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Also, more and more snow leopards

(kill) for their bones.

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These bones

(use) in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), as substitutes for the tiger bones that were used in the past.

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But perhaps the greatest long-term threat to snow leopards is climate change. Their mountain habitat

(transform) by global warming.

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Thirty percent of their habitat

(lost) in the next few years unless action is taken fast.