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2.4 The Uses of Passive Voice.
The Passive Voice is very Important in English. Allen 1947 : 281 says “Probably quite 90 percent of the passive sentences spoken or written are of the type
replacing the indefinite pronoun or reflexives in other languages…”.
While Thompson and Martinet 1969 : 175 say “ The passive voice is used in English when it is more convenient or interesting to stress the thing done than the
doer of it, or when the doer is unknown….” The passive voice is used in English in the following instances :
a. It is more interesting or important to emphasize what happened rather than who or what performed the action.
Example : There was a terrible storm last night. Hundreds of houses were destroyed.
“By” is unnecessary. b. The doer of the action is unknown. The subjects of such sentences in the
active voice are words such as “they”,”people”, “someone”, “somebody”, etc.
Example : Someone stole my car last night. My car was stolen last night. “By” cannot be used because the doer is unknown.
c. The doer of the action is known, but the speaker or writer does not want to
name the person who made a statement or did something wrong. Example : The teacher ruined the top if this desk accidentally.
The top of this desk was ruined accidentally. “By” is unnecessary.
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Note : Sometimes the doer of the action is necessary to complete the meaning of the sentence.
Example : The police officer is seen as an enemy by some; looked for aid and protection by others, and taken for granted by most.
Notice that the auxiliary “is” is used only one time. d. The doer of the action represent a large group of different individuals.
Example : A lot of coffee is grown in Brazil. “By” is unnecessary.
e. The doer of the action is obvious.
Example : The letter will be picked up after 1:00. The mailman will pick it up.
“By” is unnecessary. f.
The passive may be used to avoid an award or ungrammatical sentence. This us usually done by avoiding a change of subject.
Example : When he arrived home a detective arrested him. Would be better expressed : When he arrived home, he was arrested by a
detective .
Prepositions with Passive Verbs
A. In the passive voice, the preposition “by” is usually called the agent. When it is mentioned, is preceded by “by”.
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Example : Active : Who wrote it ? Passive : Who was it written by ?
B. When a verb + preposition is put into the passive voice, the preposition remains immediately after the verb.
Example : Active : We must put out the fire. The thief locked us in the closet.
Passive : The fire must be put out. We were locked in the closet.
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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH
3.1 Research Design
“Research design atau rancangan riset diartikan sebagai seluruh proses perencangan dan pelaksanaan suatu riset Supranto, 1997 : 39”. There are two kinds
of data : quantitative data qualitative data. Quantitative data related to the numerical measures. On the other hand, qualitative, the numerical measure is not used
Supranto, 1997 : 5-6. In this thesis, quantitative data is applied. Supranto 1997 : 40 says, “Research design atau rancangan riset diartikan
sebagai seluruh proses perancangan dan pelaksanaan riset”. It means research design is the planning process of the research or the procedures in collecting and analyzing
the data. The research design in this analysis is a descriptive study. Supranto 1997 : 41 says,” Descriptive study aims at describing the characteristics about the condition
or situation at that time. Therefore, in this descriptive analysis study which is intended only to describe the variable.
3.2 Data Collection
In collecting the data for this thesis, the writer uses library research. Supranto 1997:13 says, “Library research atau penelitian kepustakaan adalah riset dimana
dilakukan dengan jalan membaca buku-buku dan sumber lainnya di dalam perpustakaan”. It means, this method is carried out by collecting and selecting data
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