Job Discussion Forums

[dyak]

Of all the tedious gapfills there are, the one that irks me the most is when students have to change excruciatingly forced sentences from active to passive and vice versa. It seems to leave students with the idea that each tense has some deviant twin form. They crop up in FCE sentence transformations and are difficult to explain as the majority of students have truly bizarre ideas about the passive from previous levels.

Does changing passive to active and vice versa actually benefit any nationality?
What level do you introduce the passive?

I saw an ancient beginner book that introduced the passive alongside the active of each tense! Has anyone had success this way?

Cheers!

[Stephen Jones]

The KFUPM material whch we have been using for years and are now thankfully getting rid off introduces the passive directly after the active, thus ensuring that tens of thousands of Saudis never master either.

It is exceptionally rare that the active and the passive are alternatives.

The theme is different in either case, and moreover, the most common use of the passive is when the agent is unknown or unimportant.

This is why exercises that get you to change
John has painted the door
to
The door has been painted by John
are particularly nefarious. The latter makes the fact that it was John who painted the door the focus of the sentence and the fact that the door was painted as the given. This is higly unlikely to be the case.

When you get students who then change
They make Toyota cars in Japan
to
Toyota cars are made in Japan by them
you start wishing that their last teacher or grammar book could be hauled off to the war crimes tribunal.

With regard to First Certificate transformation exercises they are there as a test. Unfortunately there are too many teachers who are under the impression that the way to teach is to make the students do countless test exercises, and there is no shortage of First Certificate textbooks that pander to that depravity.

To teach the passive start it as late as possible. Start with
Mercedes cars are made in Germany
Toyota cars are made in Japan
and continue with other examples. If absolutely necessary introduce other verbs, or even the past simple 'was'. Point out the similarity between
Rolex watches are expensive
and
Rolex watches are made in Switzerland

Attempt to avoid introducing sentences with an agent and when you do introduce it in a natural context such as
'War and Peace' was written by Tolstoy
'Peanuts' was written by Shultz
Penicillin was discovered by Fleming

And never, ever teach them to convert from active to passive, unless it is specific exam practice.

[Guy Courchesne]

http://www.thegreenrabbit.ca/content/view/193/50/ credit to Yannick. Now find the passive voice. Must be 18 to read the article.

[dyak]

[Guy Courchesne]

[Roger]

I haven't had to teach the passive to my students, and I am grateful to you guys for the insightful thoughts you have poured out before me.
On the other hand, it would be wrong to conclude that teaching the passive is useless or a waste of time. Far from it - in explaining thedifferences you have to juggle with concepts such as subject and object, and a passive sentence also forces your students consciously to choose the participle form of a verb. Certain nationalities do have special problems making such a choice, i.e. Chinese.
Maybe the solution lies in a different approach: refraining from contrasting the passive with the active voice?

[Roger]

I haven't had to teach the passive to my students, and I am grateful to you guys for the insightful thoughts you have poured out before me.
On the other hand, it would be wrong to conclude that teaching the passive is useless or a waste of time. Far from it - in explaining thedifferences you have to juggle with concepts such as subject and object, and a passive sentence also forces your students consciously to choose the participle form of a verb. Certain nationalities do have special problems making such a choice, i.e. Chinese.
Maybe the solution lies in a different approach: refraining from contrasting the passive with the active voice? Though how you can do that I don't know.

[Deconstructor]

Ahhh... it's an ugly can of worms. Let the students discover it themselves. For once I'd like to have a student come up to me and say, "Hey teach, I think I figured out a part of speech just by reading an interesting article/book�, etc. For once I'd like to see a student use his/her imagination when it comes to English. I shall not hold my breath.

And another thing: on dave's we often discuss grammar and just as often get all tangle up in its web. We as teachers forget that ultimately grammar is not our specialty; it belongs to grammarians. We need not be able to write an entire book on the passive voice. We only need to be able to communicate it effectively to the student.