Welcome to this grammar section on active and passive voice. So let's first start by understanding what is the difference between the active and the passive voice. In the English language. When we talk about the voice of a sentence, we're basically talking about the relationship between the subject and the verb. So in English, we only have two voices, the active and the passive. Here's what the active voices basically, the active voice is when the subject does the verb.

So here's an example. The dog bit the boy. So dog is our subject, and bit is the verb. The subject does the verb. On the other hand, in passive voice, the verb is done to the subject. So in our example, here, we can see the boy was big By the dog.

Our verb here is bitten, and dog is the subject. So in this example, the verb is done to the subject. So do you see the difference between these two different sentences? Notice that both these sentences have the same meaning. However, they're different in their structure. Let's explore these concepts in a bit more detail.

We'll start with the active voice. So you may be wondering, when should I use the active voice? Here's the answer. The active voice is best used for conveying simple and straightforward ideas and actions. Now, there are many reasons why the active voice is far more common than the passive voice. Let's explore some of these reasons.

First of all, the active voice is direct and concise meaning The active voice gets straight to the point. It is also easier to understand. It's less awkward in structure, and it clearly indicates the relationship between the different parts of a sentence. So let's look at an example here. Here's a sentence, I fed my dog yesterday. Notice that this sentence is very clear and simple.

This sentence is written in active voice, and it's very easy to understand. On the other hand, if you were to write the same sentence in the passive voice, you would have to write my dog was fed by me yesterday. Do you see how strange and complicated this sentence sounds? It's very unnatural. Notice that both of these sentences mean the same thing. On both of these sentences are grammatically correct.

However, This particular idea is best conveyed with the active voice, because it's simple and clear. Now let's talk about the passive voice. If passive voice is so awkward in its structure, why do we use it? And when do we use it? passive voice is primarily used in two main situations. The first of these situations is when we do not want to say or do not know who did the action.

The second situation is when focusing on the recipient of the action is more important. So let's look at examples of both of these situations. Here's our first example. shoplifters were arrested. Notice that in this sentence, we don't have to say that shoplifters were arrested by the police, because this is obvious. So this is an example of the first situation we do not want to say.

Who did the action? Why? Because it's obvious there is no need to say that shoplifters were arrested by the police because only the police can arrest people. Here's another example. My car was stolen. In this case, we don't know who stole the car.

So this is also an example of the first situation, we do not know who did the action. Now let's look at an example of the second situation in which we have to use the passive voice. Here's our sentence, the road is being repaired. Notice that in this sentence, we're only focusing on the recipient of the action. We're only interested in the road. We don't really care about the people who are repairing it.

Here's another example. Here we have two sentences, which mean exactly the same thing. The poem was written by Shakespeare. She Speer wrote the poem. On the top, we have the passive voice. And here on the bottom, we have the active voice.

So both these sentences mean exactly the same thing. However, there is a difference. The difference is that in the first sentence, the focus is on the poem. Whereas in the second sentence, the focus is on Shakespeare. So, depending on what exactly you're trying to emphasize in a sentence, you may want to choose the passive voice or the active voice. So I hope that the differences between the active voice and the passive voice are clear to you now.

Let's now talk about how exactly do you go about constructing the passive voice. Basically, if you want to form the passive voice, all you have to do is use different forms of the verb to be. So here in this column, We have a list of tenses, and here we have the structure for forming the passive voice. You'll notice that depending on which tense we're talking about, we're changing the verb to be in different forms. So here are some examples. If we're talking about the present simple tense, we would say the food is eaten.

In the present continuous tense, we would say the food is being eaten. In the present perfect tense, we would say the food has been eaten. In the past simple tense, we would say the food was eaten, and so on. Now, let me show you an example of the use of active voice and passive voice in a paragraph. So in this example, we have the passive voice highlighted in this brown color, and we have the active voice in the black color. If you'd like, you can pause this video now and read This paragraph in your own time.

So that concludes this video. I'll see you in the next grammar section in which we'll talk about simple on compound sentences.