B Media and News

Expressing opinions
Passive Voice

Expressing Opinions
Here are some useful phrases for expressing your opinion:
As far as Im concerned
From my point of view
It seems/appears to me that
I would argue that
To be honest...

Passive Voice
How do we form the passive voice?
We form the passive voice using be + the past participle of the main verb.
'be' is an auxiliary verb and we must use the correct form and tense
Example:
1.Ronaldo scores a goal. (active voice -present simple)
2.A goal is scored by Ronaldo. (passive voice present simple)

3.Messi scored two goals. (active voice past simple)

4.Two goals were scored by Messi. (passive voice past simple)

The sentences in examples 3 and 4 have the same information. They tell us the same thing in a
different way.
This table shows how the grammar of each sentence is different:

Subject VERB Object AGENT

Active voice Messi scored two goals ----------
Passive voice Two goals were scored ----------- by Messi

We don't have to include the 'agent' in a passive sentence. We often use the passive when the agent
is unknown, or unimportant.
We can also use the passive when we want to change the focus of our sentence.
Example:
5. The police arrested a man yesterday.
6. A man was arrested by the police yesterday.

In sentence 5, we are talking about the police and what they did.
In sentence 6, we are talking about the man and what happened to him. We don't have to include the
police in our sentence. We can just say:
7. A man was arrested yesterday.

Newspaper Headlines
Newspaper headlines are usually short and they often use the passive voice. Often, the agent isn't
mentioned.
Newspaper headlines are made shorter by leaving out 'unnecessary' words, like the agent but also
articles and auxiliary verbs.
For example, sentence 7 may look like this as a newspaper headline:
Man Arrested Yesterday
Ways to make headlines

8.The police barred (banned) some football fans from travelling to the World Cup final.
9. A teacher has resigned because he disagrees with the contents of next year's English
examination.
10. A famous Hollywood couple are going to get a divorce.

To make headlines from these sentences we can:

Use the passive and omit unnecessary words:

8. Fans barred from World Cup final

We can use the present simple to talk about the past, and use synonyms:
9. Teacher quits in Exam row

We can use 'to + verb infinitive' to refer to the future:

10. Hollywood couple to split/ divorce