Structure and Rules of Using Past Continous Passive Voice
There are times you may want to write in both Passive Voice and Past Continuous tense. Simply, the Past Continuous tense can be identified by the past tense form of “be” and Verbs ending in ing.
For example, the sentence:
“Many elephants were being killed by poachers,” suggests that elephants had been killed by poachers, but no longer are. Something stopped the elephants from being killed.
Passive Voice is deployed to highlight a sentence’s Object. In our case, “elephants.” By writing the above example, we want the reader to focus on the “elephants” rather than the poachers. “For example,” the sentence could be rewritten in an Active Voice like so:
“Poachers were killing elephants.”
Psychologically, we are trained to focus on a sentence’s header. A sentence’s subject is much more significant to the reader or listener.
You may ask, how was this sentence constructed? There’s a simple format to follow. It goes like this:
Object + was/were + being + Past Participle Simple, right?
Examples of Passive Voice
- Passive: He was being praised nonstop for getting a perfect score.
- Active: Maggie was drawing a bird when I saw her.
- Passive: A bird was being drawn by Maggie when I saw her.
- Active: They were hugging the twins.
- Passive: The twins were being hugged by them.
Let’s practice
Q1: Change the active sentence “The father was changing the light bulb.” into a passive voice. Answer: The light bulb was being changed by their father.
Q2: Try making your own sentence.
Q3: In the past, what was being done by parents to discipline their children? How is it different now?
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Eigooo, the English Training Chat Application
To improve your English, the best way is to practice every day.
Eigooo supports you with a 24/7 chat service with real teachers.
- You can chat with the teacher one-on-one.
- The teacher will make immediate corrections to your messages.
- No need to make a reservation. You can start whenever you want.
- The free trial is ready.
Sign up now and get free messages to try it out
