Eurgh!
Tomorrow I have to teach the passive voice to a multilingual group: Spanish, French, and Russian.
The trouble is, I've never been that great at understanding it myself. Or rather, the idea of trying to explain it is frustrating me. I hate explaining things.
Anywho. I get the general gist. For example:
Andy plays basketball - is the active voice at it's saying that the subject, Andy, is actively doing something.
Basketball is played by Andy - is the passive voice. Basketball is now the subject but it's not doing anything.
And that's as far as my explanations can go. They're multilingual so using technical terms isn't going to help. Do you think that would work as an example? Of course I can more examples, such as asking each student what sport they play, write it in the active voice and get them to change it to passive...
... wait a minute? Have I already just helped myself?
I tried doing some basic passive online tests, and didn't do very well
Can I test some of you, please? I'll write some active voice sentences and can you tell me what the passive is?
1) Juanita watches films.
2) Mildred ate the cake.
3) Inigo Montoya rescued the princess.