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Transcript
00:00Hi kids! Today we will learn about active voice and passive voice.
00:09Kids, in the previous sections, we have already learned about the sentence and its components.
00:17That is, the subject, the verb, and the predicate.
00:23The subject is the one who is being talked about in the sentence, or he could be the doer of the action.
00:33The verb of the sentence tells us about the action taking place in the sentence.
00:41The predicate of a sentence contains the object.
00:46An object is the recipient of the action, that is, the person or thing on which the action is done upon.
00:57Now let's consider the following example.
01:02Joseph loves mangoes.
01:06In this sentence, the subject is Joseph, the verb is loves, and the object is mangoes.
01:17Now, you can see the order in which the components of the sentence are arranged.
01:24The subject takes up the first position, then the verb, and finally the object.
01:32The sentences arranged in this order are called active sentences.
01:39That is, the sentences in which the subject comes first and is followed by the verb and the object are active sentences.
01:51Now let's see the same sentence in another manner.
01:56Mangoes are loved by Joseph.
01:59In this sentence, the order of the subject and the object reverses itself.
02:07That is, the object comes in the first position and the subject goes in the final position.
02:15Such sentences are called passive sentences.
02:20You might want to ask, why and where do we use the passive instead of the active?
02:28Here is the answer.
02:30When we make an active sentence, the focus of the sentence lies on the subject and not on the object.
02:39For example, Joseph loves mangoes.
02:44Here, the subject, that is, Joseph, is the focus of the sentence.
02:51But when we use a passive sentence, we want to focus the object instead of subject.
02:59Let's revise it once again.
03:02In an active sentence, the subject is focused upon, and in a passive sentence, the object is focused upon.
03:14We use a passive sentence instead of an active sentence in the following cases also.
03:23One, when we do not know who the subject is, or it is not important who the subject is.
03:32For example, someone robbed the bank.
03:37The bank was robbed.
03:40In this situation, we do not know about the identity of the robbers.
03:46That is why a passive sentence, that is, the bank was robbed, and not an active sentence, that is, someone robbed the bank, is used.
04:00Two, when it is obvious who the subject is, for example, the active sentence, the police caught the thief, is expressed as, the thief was caught.
04:18Here, it is understood that the thieves are caught by the police.
04:23That is why the thief is made the focus of the sentence and not the police.
04:30Because it is usually the police who catches criminals, it is their job.
04:36So, we have learned two cases in which passive sentences are used.
04:43First, when we do not know who the subject is, or it is not important who the subject is.
04:52Second, when it is obvious who the subject is, now let's take up some more examples.
05:01Maria is writing a letter.
05:05The passive of this sentence would be, a letter is being written by Maria.
05:13The boy kicked the ball.
05:17The passive of this sentence would be, the ball was kicked by the boy.
05:25The postman delivered the mail.
05:28The passive of this sentence would be, the mail was delivered by the postman.
05:36So, kids, we have learned about active and passive sentences, their structure and their uses.
05:45Now you may go ahead and take a quiz to learn more.
05:49Bye-bye!