In our writing we often present our sentences in two different structures: the most common is the active voice and the second is the passive voice.

Written description after the video.

Active Voice:

The active voice uses an active verb. A lot of the sentences that we write are in the active voice. When a verb’s subject is actively doing the verb, we call this the active voice.

Examples:                           Harry ate the fish food.

In this sentence the verb is ‘ate’ and the subject is ‘Harry’. It is in the active voice because Harry (the subject) is actively doing the verb. Harry is doing (or did) the eating.

The school arranged a visit.

In this sentence the verb is ‘arranged’ and the subject is                                                                        ‘the school’.

Again, this is in the active voice because the subject (the school) is doing the verb (arranging).

Confused? It will make a little more sense when compared with the passive voice…

The Passive voice.

When a sentence (verb) is written in the passive voice, the subject is being acted upon by the verb (rather than subject doing the verb).

Example:                             Take the sentence from above and write it in the passive voice:

The fish food was eaten by Harry.

In this sentence the verb is ‘was eaten’ and the subject is ‘the fish food’. In this case the subject (the fish food) is being acted upon (it was eaten) rather than actively doing an action (the fish food wasn’t eating something else).

This is a passive sentence because the subject is being acted upon by the verb. We have had to use a different form of the verb with the word ‘was’ (auxiliary verb).

If we wanted to keep the same subject and the same verb, but change it to the active voice we would end up with something like:

The fish food ate Harry. (Which is just scary)