The Active and Passive Voice (And When to Use Them).
By using the active voice when sharing personal stories, goals, and future plans, your essay will take on an assertive, confident tone. Active versus Passive Voice Simply put, whether a sentence is written in active or passive voice depends on the subject.
What is passive voice? In English, all sentences are in either “active” or “passive” voice: active: Werner Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle in 1927. passive: The uncertainty principle was formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. In an active sentence, the person or thing responsible for the action in the sentence comes first.
WHY use the passive voice in academic writing? 1. Often in academic writing, we don't want to focus on who is doing an action, but on who is receiving or experiencing the action. The passive voice is thus extremely useful in academic writing because it allows writers to highlight the most important participants or events within sentences by placing them at the beginning of the sentence.
When it comes to academic writing, it is always preferable if students resort to the active voice verbs more frequently than to the passive voice verbs. If you want to prove that you know what formal or neutral English is, you have to stay in the active voice. It will be clear what the subject or doer of the action is.
Passive Voice is specifically needed for IELTS is if you get a process diagram in Academic IELTS Task 1. In this case you will use it throughout your explanation of the process. When we use the passive voice, the person or thing receiving the action becomes the subject.
This handout will explain the difference between active and passive voice in writing. It gives examples of both, and shows how to turn a passive sentence into an active one. Also, it explains how to decide when to choose passive voice instead of active.
Passive voice Some students think using the passive voice makes an essay seem more objective but it can make a sentence harder to understand: Passive voice: The information had been downloaded the day before, when she began her research.