Dangerous Smartphones - passive voice

The passive voice for reports

Hi and welcome to another great lesson from New English Academy. I’m your guide, Giles Parker, and today we’re going to look at the controversial usage of the passive voice. The comprehension text looks at a report by the BBC last year that described UK Health Protection Agency advice on the use of Smartphones. This lesson is aimed at more advanced learners but if you aren’t advanced don’t worry. Hang in there – you will find something useful for you. As always, you can get the interactive lessons online by subscribing at our website, New English Academy.com.

First, let’s talk about the passive voice. I said it was controversial. That means that people are not sure whether it is a good or useful thing to use. For example, I can use this MS Word software to automatically check for passive constructions so I can delete them. Why should I want to delete them? They are just another part of grammar, aren’t they? Well, let’s find out.

You probably know by now that the passive voice is different from the active voice. You know that the active voice says WHO did WHAT and WHEN, nice and straightforward. The subject, or the actor or the agent is at the front of the phrase. That is where our focus is – it says what is most important. For example:

· The BBC published a report about Smartphones.

You can see that the subject is The BBC and that it is the actor of the verb published, and that the result or object of the verb is a report about Smartphones.

The passive voice takes this sequence and turns it all around. In the passive voice the object that is acted upon moves to the front and becomes the subject and therefore is most important. So, if we make our example in the passive, we get:

· A report about Smartphones was published by the BBC.

Here are a couple more examples of active sentences becoming passive.

Active: The Health Agency conducted scientific studies.

Passive: Scientific studies were conducted by the Health Agency.

Active: They haven’t found any bad effects yet.

Passive: No bad effects have been found yet by them.

Do you see how the focus or the emphasis changes from WHO did WHAT? to WHAT is the result? The object becomes the subject – this is a very important change, as we shall see.

So the word order changes, but did you also see how the verb changes? What happens when you make a passive form of an active verb? Well, you just add the correct form of to be and change the verb into the past participle. Here’s another example:

Active: I changed this sentence.

Passive: This sentence has been/was changed by me.

Most verbs end in –ed in the past participle but as usual there are exceptions. Like active verbs, passive verbs can be used to talk about the present, past and future. The only thing that changes when you want to change tense is the to be form.

If you want to make a negative passive sentence, just add not after the verb. For example:

· Bad effects of using Smartphones haven’t been found yet.

If you want to describe an action that hasn’t finished just change the to be verb to the progressive form. E.g.;

· Scientific studies are being conducted.

So, to summarize so far, you can spot passive sentences just by asking a couple of simple questions.

1. What is at the front of the sentence – the subject of the verb or the object of the verb?

2. Is there a form of to be + a verb (past participle) in the sentence?

3. Does the sentence show the actor of the verb using by – or even, is the actor missing?

When do you want to use the passive voice instead of the active voice? The passive voice is used (ahem) when:

1. You don’t know who the actor is. E.g.;

o The validity of the report has been questioned. (But I don’t know who questioned it.)

2. You know who the actor is but it isn’t important right now. E.g.;

o It was pointed out that rates of cancer should be monitored. (Who pointed this out is not important.)

3. You actually want to be vague about who the actor is. E.g.;

o Mistakes were made. (I know who made the mistakes but they wouldn’t like it if I told you.)

4. You really want to emphasize the result of the action. E.g.;

o These mistakes should not be repeated. (These mistakes, not others.)

5. You are writing in a special area e.g. science reports. E.g.;

o No conclusive links to infertility were found. (We write this way sometimes in science reports.)

6. You don’t actually know too much detail about what you are talking about. E.g.;

o Some egos had been pricked. (But I don’t know whose and I’m not going to find out, OK?)

A couple of warnings –

We shouldn’t use passives in instructions. E.g.;

· Part A should be attached to Part B.

Instead, we can be more direct here and use the imperative. E.g.;

· Attach Part A to Part B.

And we shouldn’t use passive constructions that begin with It…. E.g.;

· It has been noted that someone has written graffiti on the lavatory door again.

Sentences that start with It… don’t clarify or tell us anything. They just have extra meaningless words. We all want to know WHO noted it!

So why is this all controversial? Why does MS Word have a grammar checker that will look for passive constructions in your writing? What could possibly be wrong with passive sentences? Well, look at them again – we can’t see who the actor or the agent is. In English, it is usually very important to know WHO did WHAT and WHEN. We’re kind of explicit, almost constipated about this. Passive sentences can hide the WHO. They can make communication vague or confusing. They can disguise problems. They can let the person who is responsible escape from taking responsibility. In this way, sometimes passive sentences actually lack credibility – sometimes we find it hard to actually believe the person who is using them. English language, and this plays out in the culture too, expects high levels of responsibility, clarity and precision. The passive allows us to be less clear and less precise. Maybe we should ask ourselves why exactly we don’t want to be clear or precise.

To conclude, when using the passive, don’t forget to make the object the subject of the verb, use a form of to be + a past participle. But perhaps most importantly, check why you or another writer or speaker is using the passive.

There are other things to learn about the passive like how to use them with modals and causatives and we’ll look at them in later lessons. Now we’re going to listen to or read the comprehension text. As usual, don’t forget to look for examples of today’s grammar focus in the text.

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Comprehension text: Dangerous Smartphones

Are you listening to this podcast on a Smartphone? If you are, you might want to hold it away from your head by about an inch or more. I’m not trying to scare you. The good news is that according to a news report on the UK’s BBC website last April you are in no danger of cancer caused by the radio waves from your phone. For the moment, there is still no firm evidence to show that mobile phones damage your health. But, UK Health Protection Agency advice on mobile phone use by kids is unchanged, and it is still recommended that excessive use by kids be discouraged.

The BBC news report is based on a major review by the Health Protection Agency in the UK. Hundreds of scientific studies into the effects of mobile phone use were investigated by HPA scientists. No conclusive links to the increased risk of cancer, decreased brain function or infertility were found. The effects of low-level radio-frequencies were specifically investigated but no deleterious effects were discovered. Brain cancers are not (it seems) caused by exposure to radio frequency.

However, the HPA was cautious in its conclusion. The results were said to be “relatively reassuring”. But it was also pointed out that rates of brain tumour and other cancers should continue to be monitored. Furthermore, it was noted that the long term effects of something that hasn’t been around for very long can’t easily be discovered. More research is needed on the effect of radio frequency on brain activity, and perhaps on links with children’s behavioural problems. Well, I’ll take that as a vote for continued use with moderation – like so many other fun things in life.

The best thing about this news report, though, is the bun fight it has caused in the Comments Section immediately beneath the report. It was early afternoon on the day the article was posted when I first read it and already 349 comments had been posted. I doubt that any records have been broken there, but it all makes for entertaining reading. Along the way, the validity of the research had been questioned, various dire conclusions had been asserted, soap-boxes had been thumped and egos had been pricked.

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I have learned a lot more than the original content of the article, which was dry and to the point. I have been reminded that everyone has an opinion on everything; that maybe, in my humble opinion, some people have too much free-time; and that a sense of humour and a sense of respect make communicating opinions much easier. What do you think?