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Order your books on Amazon!This activity helps students recognize and correctly use the passive voice, which focuses on the object receiving an action rather than the subject performing it. By practicing sentence transformation, students will improve their ability to use passive structures in writing and speaking, especially in formal and academic contexts.
Student Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Passive Voice ESL Activity Preparation:
Prepare a list of active sentences (e.g., The chef cooked the meal) and their passive counterparts (The meal was cooked by the chef). Create a worksheet with sentences in the active voice that students will transform into the passive voice. Additionally, prepare a set of sentence strips, some in the active voice and some in the passive voice, for a matching activity.
For a hands-on exercise, write different verbs in both present and past participle forms on flashcards (e.g., write/written, build/built, clean/cleaned). These will help students practice forming passive sentences with various tenses.
Passive Voice ESL Activity Guidelines:
Begin by explaining the structure of passive voice sentences (object + be + past participle + by subject). Show how an active sentence (The teacher explained the lesson) becomes passive (The lesson was explained by the teacher). Emphasize when passive voice is used, such as when the focus is on the action rather than the subject (A new bridge was built last year).
Distribute the worksheet and have students work individually or in pairs to convert active sentences into passive ones. For example, Scientists discovered a new planet should be rewritten as A new planet was discovered by scientists. After completion, review answers as a class, discussing any common errors.
Next, use the sentence strip activity. Give students mixed strips and have them match active and passive versions. Then, ask them to identify patterns in how passive sentences are formed.
To reinforce learning, give each student a verb flashcard and have them construct their own passive sentences using the correct tense, such as A book is written by an author or The cake was baked by my mother.
Follow-Up ESL Activities:
For additional practice, assign a writing task where students describe a process using passive voice, such as How chocolate is made. Alternatively, conduct a class storytelling activity where each student adds a passive sentence to continue the story (e.g., A treasure was found on the beach).
Another fun option is a “passive transformation relay,” where students take turns converting active sentences into passive ones under time pressure.