Grammar for IELTS: A look at the passive voice

Improving your grammatical skills is important if you want to achieve your desired band scores in Speaking and Writing.

In this article, we’ll be focusing on another grammatical structure that you may find useful on your IELTS test, the passive voice.

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In grammar, voice is the form the verb takes to show the relationship between the action (or state, in some cases) and the participants (subject, object) in an event.

The voice can be active or passive:

• In a sentence written in the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action (e.g. She wrote the letter.)

• On the other hand, in a sentence written in the passive voice, the subject receives the action (e.g. The letter was written.)

Now that you know what we mean by ‘passive voice’, let’s look at when and how to use it.

In a nutshell, we use the passive voice when we want to focus the reader’s attention on the person or thing affected by the action.

In the above example “The letter was written.”, our attention goes to the letter. As you may have already noticed, we form the passive using be (in a suitable tense) and the past participle (written, invited, stolen, etc.) In what situations, then, should we use the passive voice instead of the active voice?

1. when we do NOT know who the agent (or doer) is

• For much of human history, animals have been captured and put in zoos for our entertainment.

2. when it is obvious to the listener or reader who the agent is

• I recently quit my job because I was being paid less than my less experienced, male colleagues.

3. when it is not important to know who the agent is

• What a lot of people in western countries don’t realize is that most of their fancy clothes are made overseas in rural and poor areas.

4. when people in general are the agents

• Nowadays, most movies and TV shows can be streamed online.

Note that when using the passive voice, we can leave out the agent or doer, just like we did in all of the examples above, or we can place the agent in a prepositional phrase (by + agent) when the agent is important:

• One of the best gifts that I’ve ever received was a necklace that was given to me by my grandmother.

The passive can be used with all tenses. The table below gives examples of the most common forms in the passive:

Importantly, we do NOT form passive structures with intransitive verbs (e.g. She died., not She was died.).

Also, when talking about someone’s birth, use the past form of be + born (e.g. He was born in Scotland., not He is born in Scotland.)

Just as in real life, you may use the passive voice at any point during the Speaking and Writing sections of the IELTS. However, keep in mind that the passive voice is used much more frequently in writing than in speaking.

In fact, Writing Task 1 may require you to use this structure often, particularly when describing a process or diagram (e.g. The materials are then taken to the recycling plant.). If you feel like you need more practice in this area, make sure you set some time aside to focus on improving your grammar while preparing for IELTS.

By Andrea Castro