The passive is a favourite grammar area to use for quizzes. In coursebooks, these are often 'general
knowledge quizzes'. A variation on this would be to design a 'themed' quiz. For example:
Entertainment Quiz: Books, Movies, Music and Art
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Scientific experiments
Because a high quantity of passives occur in scientific texts, try bringing some simple ones in for students to
analyse. The website Popular Science (www.popsci.com) is one possible source, or look at the Science
section of any news website to find out about recent experiments.
A more creative exercise for general English classes would be for students to role play scientists, presenting
the results of certain 'crazy' experiments. They would write up their mock experiments first, and then present
them orally to each other.
In the news
Go to any news website and look for news stories that have examples of the passive. Put together three or four
of these on a worksheet. Ask students to 1) find and underline the passives and 2) speculate why the passive is
used there.
A variation on this activity would be to find an interesting news story (again, with examples of the passive in it)
and give students a number of key words from the story (include at least one passive). Ask students to write
what they think the news story is about, then compare with the original. Then analyze the differences. Did the
students use active voice or passive voice more?
It is said
To practise the passive form of reporting verbs, you could do one of the following activities.
Five bizarre things
Ask students to think of five bizarre facts about the town they live or a place they know (they could do this for
homework). These could be strange historical facts, legends about local people, scary stories Prepare five
yourself about a place that you know to give them an example. Ask them to write out each fact, but starting with
one of the following constructions:
It is believed that
It is said that
It is claimed that
Ask students to exchange their bizarre facts.