Page 83 - Grammar Glow - 8

15 15 Active and Passive Voice

Warm-up

Change the voice of the given sentences.
1. My sister writes exciting stories. ___________________________________
2. We played football in the park. ___________________________________

3. The lion will attack the prey. ___________________________________
4. The class teacher is teaching Hindi ___________________________________
5. The children were flying kites on the rooftop. ___________________________________
6. My best friend has won the first prize . ___________________________________

7. John had helped me before anybody else. ___________________________________
8. They will have lost the opportunity. ___________________________________

Active and Passive Voice
All transitive verbs have an active and a passive voice because these verbs require objects.

Sentences that have transitive verbs are formed into passives.
Some common transitive verbs followed by a direct object are:

bring take annoy buy
send tell lay show

owe verify lend get
contain check offer wash
pass make edit finalise

The active voice is used when the subject does an action upon an object.
• Somebody wore my shoes. • Rina cut the cake.
In the above sentences, the subjects somebody and Rina are doing actions upon the objects shoes
and cake respectively.
The passive voice is used when we want to emphasise the action (the verb) and the object of a
sentence rather than the subject. Either the subject is less important than the action or the subject
is unknown.
• My shoes were worn by somebody. • The cake was cut by Rina.
In the above sentences, the objects shoes and cake are emphasised more than the subjects
somebody and Rina.

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