From the room, last lesson
Six sentences collected during the explanations. Two have grammar errors. Four are correct English that no English speaker would have written.
Six sentences. Repair the two errors, and improve the four that are merely correct.
1. The forms are checked by a person in the office by hand.
2. The bins are emptied by the bin men on Tuesday.
3. The report will written next week.
4. The dough is kneaded by the baker and then it is left by him to rise.
5. It has sent to the laboratory.
6. The samples are collected by somebody every morning.
The finding
The exercise you did, and the sentence you need
Almost everybody meets the passive in the same exercise. John broke the window. → The window was broken by John. Transform ten of these and you have learned the passive.
Except that nobody has ever said the window was broken by John. If you know it was John, you say so: John broke the window. The passive sentence exists only in the exercise, and it exists there because the exercise needs both versions to contain the same information so that the answer can be marked.
What the exercise teaches, then, is that a passive is an active sentence rearranged, with the agent carried across into a by-phrase. That is why learner passives are recognisable even when nothing in them is wrong: they are complete. Every one has an agent, and the agents are things like by a person, by somebody, by the bin men — grammatical, and carrying no information at all.
Real passives are not made from active sentences. Nobody writing the samples are tested the same afternoon began with a technician tests the samples the same afternoon and rearranged it. They decided the paragraph was about the samples, and the verb form followed. There was never an agent to carry across, because the agent was never in the plan.
So the repair is not more transformation practice. It is deciding what the sentence is about before deciding anything else — and then writing a by-phrase only when the agent is genuinely news.
Three questions.
1. Why does The window was broken by John exist?
2. What makes a learner passive recognisable even when it is correct?
3. How is a real passive produced?
Three habits, and the errors that remain
What to do instead of transforming
| Habit | What you do | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Subject first | Before writing the verb, decide what this sentence — and the next three — are about. Then let the voice follow. | The passive is a consequence of that decision, not a separate step. Choose the topic and the form arrives correct. |
| 2 · The news test for by | Write the by-phrase only if you could add "and that is the interesting part" after it without sounding odd. | It removes by somebody, by a person, by the workers at a stroke, and keeps by an intern, by the residents themselves. |
| 3 · Say the auxiliary | It’s been sent. It’ll be checked. It’s being held. Five times each, aloud. | The remaining grammar errors are all dropped auxiliaries, and they are dropped because they are unstressed and were never heard. |
What does not work. Doing more transformation exercises. You can already transform; that is the one thing the original teaching succeeded at. What is missing is the choice that comes before the sentence, and no transformation drill contains that choice — the active version has already made it for you.
Eight by-phrases. Match each to what it does — and four of them do nothing.
Four questions.
1. What do you decide before choosing active or passive?
2. The news test keeps which of these?
3. What are the remaining grammar errors, once the by-phrases are sorted out?
4. Why will more transformation practice not help?
Choosing the subject, then the verb
One to four words per gap. Keep every sentence on the same subject, and add an agent only where the sentence tells you it is news.
The application in March. It within five days, notified to neighbours and put out for consultation. Two hundred comments , which is more than any application in the borough has ever attracted. The report the case officer, and the decision to committee rather than delegated — the only application that year of which that true.
Eight sentences. Seven need work; one is right, and it is the one that looks most wrong.
1. The parcel will collected on Friday.
2. The samples have tested and the results are ready.
3. The chairs are made by workers in a workshop in Kent.
4. The mural was painted by the residents themselves over one weekend. — correct as written
5. The bridge was widened in 1998 by builders.
6. It was happened before I arrived.
7. The forms is processed in Leeds.
8. The dough is rolled by you and then it is cut by you into shapes.
The by-phrase audit
Task card · Pairs · 10 minutes · Speaking and cutting
Give your Lesson 5 explanation again, in three minutes rather than six. Your partner writes down every by-phrase you use.
Three minutes each, then four minutes auditing both lists together.
- Speaker: three minutes only. The cut forces choices, and the choices are the exercise.
- Listener: write every by you hear, with the noun after it. Nothing else.
- Together: run the news test on each. Could you add "and that is the interesting part"?
- Count what survives. Two or three in a three-minute explanation is normal. Eight is the exercise talking.
And one more count. While you audit, mark any sentence where the auxiliary went missing — will collected, has tested. Those are not choices; they are the two unstressed words. Say each repaired sentence aloud twice before you move on.
What survived the test
Two questions.
1. How many of your by-phrases survived?
2. The ones that survived had what in common?
Choose the topic, not the transformation
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Where does a real passive come from?
2. When do you write a by-phrase?
Next. Two hundred and fifty words describing a process, written slowly enough that every subject can be chosen on purpose.