Example of Passive and Active Voice: A Guide for 2026

You can probably recognise this feeling. You listen to a podcast episode and understand the main point. You read an article and follow the argument. Then someone asks you to explain the same idea out loud, and your sentence falls apart halfway through.

That moment is where many intermediate learners get stuck. You know more than you can use. Grammar terms blur together. You vaguely remember “active voice” and “passive voice”, but in real speaking or writing, you're not sure which one sounds natural, or how to switch quickly without freezing.

This is why an example of passive and active voice matters more than it seems. It isn't just a school grammar topic. It helps you turn knowledge you recognise into language you can produce.

Table of Contents

• From Understanding to Speaking Breaking the Plateau
  • Why this grammar point matters in real life
  • The plateau often feels like a confidence problem
  • Active voice helps build production habits
• The Core Difference Active vs Passive Voice Explained
  • Active voice puts the subject in charge
  • Passive voice moves the focus
  • Why learners mix them up
  • A quick test you can use
• How to Switch Between Active and Passive Voice
  • A simple three-step method
  • Transformation table
  • What usually goes wrong
  • A fast editing habit
• Choosing Your Voice When to Be Active or Passive
  • Why active voice is often the default
  • When passive voice is the better choice
  • Passive voice in academic writing
  • A practical decision check
• Passive and Active Voice in Romance Languages
  • Spanish often avoids the heavy English-style passive
  • French often uses on instead of a formal passive
  • Italian often prefers si constructions or active wording
  • A side-by-side feel for naturalness
• Test Your Understanding Practice Exercises
  • Try these before looking at the answers
  • Answers with explanation
  • One final habit for practice

From Understanding to Speaking Breaking the Plateau

A lot of learners hit the same wall. You can spot the correct answer in a multiple-choice exercise, but you can't build the sentence fast enough in conversation. That gap is real, and it's common.

UK benchmark data discussed in relation to Cambridge English tasks shows that learners stuck at the intermediate plateau score below 55% on spontaneous production tasks while scoring 75–80% on recognition tasks. In plain English, many learners can recognise language much better than they can produce it.

Why this grammar point matters in real life

Take these two sentences:

• The manager approved the report.
• The report was approved by the manager.

Most learners understand both. But when speaking, the first one usually comes faster. It gives your brain a simpler route: who did what.

That matters because spoken fluency depends on speed of retrieval, not just knowledge. If your sentence shape is clearer, your mouth has less work to do.

Practical rule: When you're stuck mid-sentence, start with the doer of the action. Active voice often gives you the quickest path forward.

The plateau often feels like a confidence problem

It isn't only confidence. It's also sentence engineering.

Intermediate learners often know grammar in a passive way. You can look at a sentence and judge it. But active production asks for a different skill: choose a subject, choose a verb, place the object, keep the tense, and keep talking. That's why active and passive voice can feel easy in exercises and slippery in real communication.

A useful way to think about it is this: passive knowledge is like recognising a song when it plays, active skill is singing it yourself without the lyrics in front of you.

Active voice helps build production habits

If you're trying to move from “I know this” to “I can say this”, active voice is often the better training ground. It pushes you to name the actor and state the action directly.

That directness helps in:

• Speaking tasks where you need quick, clear sentences
• Emails and messages where clarity matters more than formality
• Writing practice when you want to sound more confident and less translated from your first language

Passive voice still matters. You do need it. But many intermediate learners benefit from first becoming very comfortable with active patterns, then adding passive voice with intention instead of confusion.

The Core Difference Active vs Passive Voice Explained

Think of a sentence like a film scene. The camera has to point somewhere.

In active voice, the camera points at the person or thing doing the action. In passive voice, the camera points at the person or thing receiving the action.

Active voice puts the subject in charge

Look at this example:

• The dog chased the ball.

The subject is the dog. The verb is chased. The object is the ball.

This is active because the subject performs the action.

Other active examples:

• Maria wrote the email.
• The chef prepared dinner.
• Our team solved the problem.

These sentences feel direct because the doer comes first.

If you want more practice building clearer sentence patterns, this guide on how to improve sentence structure is a useful companion.

Passive voice moves the focus

Now look at the same idea in passive form:

• The ball was chased by the dog.

The action still happens. The meaning is almost the same. But the focus changes. Now the sentence begins with the ball, the receiver of the action.

A common passive pattern is:

• object + form of be + past participle
• sometimes followed by by + doer

Examples:

• The email was written by Maria.
• Dinner was prepared by the chef.
• The problem was solved by our team.

Why learners mix them up

The confusion usually comes from two places.

First, learners often focus only on the verb form. They see was written and think, “That's passive.” That's partly right, but it misses the bigger question: what is the sentence focusing on?

Second, some sentences don't mention the doer at all:

• The window was broken.
• A decision was made.
• The tickets were sold.

These are passive too. The actor is hidden or unknown.

Active voice answers, “Who did it?”
Passive voice answers, “What happened to it?”

A quick test you can use

When you're not sure, ask this question:

Is the subject doing the action, or receiving it?

• The teacher explained the lesson.
  The teacher is doing the action. Active.

• The lesson was explained by the teacher.
  The lesson is receiving the action. Passive.

That single question clears up most examples of passive and active voice faster than long grammar definitions do.

How to Switch Between Active and Passive Voice

Many learners understand the difference but get lost when they try to transform a sentence. The tense changes, the word order shifts, and suddenly the sentence feels unfamiliar.

That struggle is common. Research discussed in this language learning article reports that in the UK, 80% of students do not know when to correctly use the passive voice, and 70% struggle specifically with changing its tense.

A simple three-step method

Use this sequence every time.

1. Find the action

   • What verb shows the main action?
   • Example: “The company launched the product.”

2. Find the doer and the receiver

   • Doer: the company
   • Receiver: the product

3. Swap their positions and adjust the verb

   • Active: The company launched the product.
   • Passive: The product was launched by the company.

When you go the other way, do the reverse:

1. Find the receiver at the beginning.
2. Find the hidden or stated doer.
3. Put the doer first and simplify the verb.

Transformation table

Tense	Active Voice Example	Passive Voice Example
Present simple	The teacher corrects the homework.	The homework is corrected by the teacher.
Past simple	The chef cooked the meal.	The meal was cooked by the chef.
Present continuous	The team is preparing the report.	The report is being prepared by the team.
Present perfect	Sarah has finished the project.	The project has been finished by Sarah.
Future simple	They will announce the results.	The results will be announced by them.

What usually goes wrong

Learners often make one of these mistakes:

• They keep the old verb form

  • Wrong: The meal cooked by the chef.
  • Better: The meal was cooked by the chef.

• They forget the past participle

  • Wrong: The report was prepare by the team.
  • Better: The report was prepared by the team.

• They force a passive where it sounds awkward

  • “My friend has a car” doesn't turn neatly into a useful passive sentence.

Some sentences can be changed mechanically, but that doesn't always make them natural. Grammar lets you form a sentence. Good usage helps you choose whether you should.

A fast editing habit

When checking your own writing, try this mini-routine:

• Underline the subject and ask whether it acts or receives.
• Circle the verb phrase and check whether the tense still matches your meaning.
• Read the sentence aloud and ask which version sounds clearer.

That last step matters. Your ear often catches awkward passive sentences before your grammar notes do.

Choosing Your Voice When to Be Active or Passive

Many learners hear a simplified rule: use active voice, avoid passive voice. That advice is helpful, but it's incomplete. Good writers and speakers choose based on purpose.

Why active voice is often the default

Active voice usually sounds clearer because it names the actor early.

Compare these:

• We updated your booking yesterday.
• Your booking was updated yesterday.

Both are correct. But the active version feels more direct and easier to process. That's one reason many public-facing style guides prefer active voice for everyday communication.

Active voice often works best in:

• Emails
  • “I've attached the file.”
• Instructions
  • “Press the green button.”
• Speaking exams
  • “I chose this topic because...”
• Business writing
  • “Our team reviewed the proposal.”

When passive voice is the better choice

Passive voice has real uses. It helps when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious from context.

Here are three strong reasons to use it:

• The actor is unknown
  • My bike was stolen.
• The actor doesn't matter
  • The road was closed this morning.
• You want to emphasise the result or object
  • The painting was damaged during transport.

Here, passive voice becomes a style tool, not just a grammar exercise.

If the most important information is the result, passive voice can place that result where readers notice it first.

Passive voice in academic writing

Academic English used to rely heavily on passive constructions, especially to foreground procedures rather than people. That pattern is changing.

A 2025 corpus-based study in Nature confirmed a general and measurable decline in the use of the passive voice across academic disciplines, showing a shift from object-focused passivity to more direct, subject-focused writing.

That doesn't mean passive voice disappeared. It means writers now use it more selectively.

For example:

• Passive-heavy style: The samples were analysed and the results were recorded.
• More active modern style: We analysed the samples and recorded the results.

Both are acceptable in some contexts. The second often feels more precise and accountable.

A short explanation can help fix the idea in your ear:

A practical decision check

Before choosing active or passive, ask:

1. Who matters most in this sentence?
2. What should come first for clarity?
3. Would a native speaker use this structure here?

If you can answer those three questions, you'll stop treating voice as a grammar trap and start using it as a communication choice.

Passive and Active Voice in Romance Languages

English uses the passive voice quite naturally. Spanish, French, and Italian can form passives too, but native speakers often prefer other structures. This preference often causes intermediate learners to sound translated.

Spanish often avoids the heavy English-style passive

English learners often produce sentences like:

• La carta fue escrita por María.

That's grammatical. But in daily Spanish, speakers often prefer an active sentence or a se construction.

More natural alternatives:

• María escribió la carta.
• Se escribió la carta.

A discussion of passive voice problems for Spanish learners notes that UK-based Spanish learners report that passive voice in Spanish is used far less often than in English, and that overload of passive drills can extend the plateau by 3–6 months.

If you need a quick refresher on the verb used in many passive structures, this page on conjugating ser is handy.

French often uses on instead of a formal passive

French can form a true passive:

• La lettre a été écrite par Marie.

But in ordinary speech, many speakers prefer:

• Marie a écrit la lettre.
• On a écrit la lettre.

That little word on is one reason French often sounds more natural and less rigid than direct translation suggests. English learners sometimes overuse passive forms because they expect French to mirror English sentence patterns.

In Romance languages, the most grammatical sentence isn't always the most native-sounding sentence.

Italian often prefers si constructions or active wording

Italian also has a standard passive:

• La lettera è stata scritta da Maria.

But native usage often shifts toward active or si structures, depending on context:

• Maria ha scritto la lettera.
• Si vende pane.
• Si parla italiano qui.

These patterns can feel strange if you learned voice mainly through English grammar tables. Yet they're exactly the kind of structures that make your language sound lived-in rather than assembled.

A side-by-side feel for naturalness

Here's the same idea across languages:

Language	More direct or natural option	Formal passive option
English	People speak Spanish here.	Spanish is spoken here.
Spanish	Se habla español aquí.	El español es hablado aquí.
French	On parle espagnol ici.	L'espagnol est parlé ici.
Italian	Si parla spagnolo qui.	Lo spagnolo è parlato qui.

The formal passive versions can be grammatical, but they often sound heavier. For intermediate learners, this matters a lot. If you over-translate English passive patterns, your output becomes slower and less natural.

Test Your Understanding Practice Exercises

You don't master this by reading about it once. You master it by spotting the pattern and rebuilding the sentence yourself.

Intermediate learners often recognise around 2,000–3,000 words but actively use fewer than 500–800 in spontaneous output. That gap is one reason deliberate practice matters. Every time you convert a sentence, you train retrieval, not just recognition.

Try these before looking at the answers

1. The company launched a new app.
2. The window was broken during the storm.
3. The teacher has explained the rule.
4. Dinner is being prepared by my brother.
5. People speak Italian in that region.

If you want more grammar work tied to real usage, this article on Spanish grammar in context supports the same output-first habit.

Answers with explanation

1. The company launched a new app.
This is active. The subject, “the company”, does the action.
Passive version: A new app was launched by the company.

2. The window was broken during the storm.
This is passive. The subject, “the window”, receives the action. The doer is not named.
Possible active version: The storm broke the window.
This works because the storm can function as the actor.

3. The teacher has explained the rule.
This is active.
Passive version: The rule has been explained by the teacher.
Notice the verb change from has explained to has been explained.

4. Dinner is being prepared by my brother.
This is passive in the present continuous.
Active version: My brother is preparing dinner.

5. People speak Italian in that region.
This is active, but it already sounds general and natural.
Possible passive version: Italian is spoken in that region.
Both are correct. The passive version shifts the focus to the language rather than the people.

One final habit for practice

When you study, don't only label sentences. Convert them aloud.

• Read one active sentence
• Turn it into passive
• Turn it back into active
• Say which version sounds better and why

That small routine forces your brain to move from understanding to production. And that's exactly the move most intermediate learners need.

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