Real Grammar - Susan Conrad, Douglas Biber 2009

Passive Voice
Unit 16 No significant difference was found

What have you learned from your grammar textbook?

The passive voice focuses on the object receiving the action. Usually passives occur when the agent of an action is unknown or unimportant. (See Unit 17 for the choice between active voice and passives with a by-phrase.)

Passive Voice

• The house was built in 1856.

Active Voice

• Someone built the house in 1856.

What does the corpus show?

A

Passive voice is much more common in academic writing than in conversation and fiction. It is especially common and useful in research writing, where omitting the agent of an action is effective for several reasons:

B

Frequency information. Passive voice verbs are especially common for two functions in research writing:

• A large-scale experiment was carried out in which cold sea water was injected into lava flows.

• A solvent was used to separate larger quantities of the silica gel.

• The absolute level of cooperativeness for urban subjects was found to be quite high.

• The parallel arrangement of nuclear moments is shown in Figure 2.12.

C

Be careful! Even though passive verbs are more common in academic writing than in conversation and other types of writing, they account for only about ¹/₄ of the verbs. Overuse of passive voice can make writing less effective. Even in research writing, professionals use active voice with names or personal pronouns to describe some actions and interpretations:

• Zotkin and Tsikulin measured the angle of 40,000 fallen trees.

• We interpret these results in the following way: ...

Sometimes writers use active voice because they want to emphasize the researcher’s role (for example, in a new procedure or with a new interpretation).

However, different academic fields have different expectations for the use of passive voice. For instance, some fields always report procedures in passive voice; in other fields there is great variation. Discuss the expectations for your academic field with your teachers.

Activities

1 Notice in context: Read this paragraph about research, underline the passive voice verbs and circle the subjects of those verbs.

How to Conduct Interviews for Research

Many types of data can be easily gathered. Research is more problematic if the data are collected from personal interviews. Before people are interviewed, the interviewers should be given some training, since only trained interviewers can carry out the process accurately. In some situations, the social and psychological aspects of interviews are too often ignored. For example, the use of white interviewers in a black community may distort the information. Great care must be taken with the interview respondents, since they are very important to the research project.

2 Practice writing: These sentences describe a research project that studied plants. Each pair has one sentence in passive voice and one in active voice. Choose one sentence from each pair so that together your four choices make an effective paragraph. Circle the letter of your choice.

Dangers to Growing Plants Are Seen in Leaf Development

1. a. Some of the dangers to plants can be measured by studying individual leaves or flowers or seeds.

b. Botanists can measure dangers to plants by studying individual leaves or flowers or seeds.

2. a. White clover was chosen as an ideal plant to study in order to observe threats to plant life.

b. Many people thought white clover would be a good plant to study in order to observe threats to plant life.

3. a. In a field study, young leaves were marked as they began to expand, and their development was followed by repeated observation.

b. In a field study, Peters marked young leaves as they began to expand and then followed their development by repeated observation.

4. a. From this, some of the causes of death or damage in plant populations were determined.

b. From this he determined some of the causes of death or damage in plant populations.

Concluding Sentence: In the future, plant leaves will be studied carefully, since they contain important clues about plant health.

Now write your paragraph, adding the concluding sentence above. Then compare your paragraph with a partner's. Discuss your reasons for choosing passive or active voice for sentences 1 to 4, and explain the author's choice in the concluding sentence.

3 Practice writing: use the notes in the box to write a paragraph about the scientific study of insects. For each sentence you write, choose between active and passive voice. Use some of the common passive voice verbs listed in Section B.

• the scientific study of insects = “entomology”

• over a million species of insects observed in wild

• perhaps four million species more

• insects in nearly all environments

• only a few types of insects in oceans

• many believe insects are one of the most abundant types of life

When you are done, compare your paragraph with a partner's. Explain the choices you made between active and passive verbs.