Generally, active voice is more used than passive voice in the sentences because it is need less word, less ambiguous, more active because the doer of the
action is the focus of the attention, and easier to read than the passive one.
C. Passive Voice in the Simple Past Tense
1. The Form of Passive Voice in the Simple Past Tense
To make the form of passive voice in the simple past tense discussion clearer, the writer will compare the formulation of passive voice in the simple past
tense in the formulation of active voice in the simple past tense.
The form of active sentence in the simple past tense is most usual and most used because it is more simple. That is:
Subject + V2 + Object
Example: 1. The Greeks destroyed the Troy.
The grammatical subject above is the Greeks and the function is as the doer
of the action. The sentence above is named active because the subject doing the
action to the object the Troy. To convert the sentence into passive, the speaker can
follow some steps below:
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-
Move the position of the Greeks the grammatical subject of the active
sentence to the position of object in the passive. -
Move the position of the Troy the grammatical object in the active
sentence to the position of object in the passive, because the focus of the passive sentence will be change to the recipient.
-
Add to be, because the subject is the Troy so the proper to be for the Troy is was.
-
Then conjugate the verb into the past participle form of destroyed. Because the form of destroy in past tense similar with the form of destroy in past
participle, the verb uses here is destroyed. So the sentence will be:
2. The Troy was destroyed by the Greeks.
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ActivePassive Voice, http:staff.jccc.netpmcqueentipsvoice.htm , accessed on June 2
nd
, 2010
Form the explanation above, the writer conclude that to convert active sentence into passive one, the student have to pay attention on the following steps
and the student can use these following steps to form a passive voice with any kind of tenses,
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including the simple past tense: -
The object in the active sentence became the subject in the passive. -
The form of verb is changed by using the same tense of verb ‘to be’ together with the past participle of verb.
- The subject in the active becomes the object of the word ‘by’, but when the
subject is a word like people or someone the doer is not obvious, or if the word is not containing important information for the sentence it is better to
left it out. Similar to active voice, the passive also can use in three kind of sentence, they
are assertive usually known as positive, negative and interrogative sentence.
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In order to make the process of conversion clear, the writer will give the example of
active of sentence as comparator:
1. Affirmative - Passive Active: He wrote a letter.
