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Topic: Active and passive

These resources look at the contrast between active and passive voice, which offer different ways of presenting information. Compare the active clause The children decorated the cake with the passive clause The cake was decorated by the children. In the active the Subject indicates the 'doer' of the action of decorating (the children), while in the passive the Subject indicates what had the action 'done to' it (the cake).

Genre of Argument and Discussion 2

Lesson Plan

Goals:

  • Identify and analsye how nominalisations are used in essays
  • Identify and analsye how the passiv voice is used in essays
  • Apply these features in a writing task

Lesson Plan

This is Part 2 of the lesson on Argument and Discussion. 

Make sure you have the handout from Part 1. 

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Genre of Argument and Discussion 2

Activities

This is Part 2 of the lesson on Argument and Discussion. 

Make sure you have the handout from Part 1. 

In the first lesson, you looked at how information is organised through discourse structure. In this lesson, you will examine choices of language and register.  

Activity 1

Re-read paragraph 3. Can you find an example of the same word being used in different grammatical roles?

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Genre of Encyclopaedia Entries

Lesson Plan

Goals:

  • Identify the purpose and tone of encyclopaedia entries
  • Analyse the discourse structure and register features
  • Produce an encyclopaedia entry using the same techniques

Lesson Plan

Before this lesson, you may want to complete the lesson An Introduction to Genre, so that learners are familiar with the key terms discourse structure and register

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Genre of Encyclopaedia Entries

Activities

Warm up

What kind of text is an encyclopaedia?

What is its purpose?

What makes it different from other texts?

Activity 1

Read the Tiger encyclopaedia entry.

  1. What are three facts you learn about tigers?
  2. How is this text written? What is the tone? Why is it written in this way?

What three words best describe the tone and style of this text?

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Passives with 'get'

Goals

  • Identify the difference between a get-passive and a standard passive.
  • Describe some of the differences between get-passives and standard passives in terms of grammar, semantics, and pragmatics.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at passives.

First, let's briefly review our understanding of actives, and of passives and get-passives. 

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Passives with 'get': Activity

Uncle Ahmed was bitten by the snake.
Uncle Ahmed got bitten by the snake.

A large house was demolished on Westmoreland Hill.
A large house got demolished on Westmoreland Hill.

These temples were abandoned in medieval times.
These temples got abandoned in medieval times.

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Changing voice: Activity 2

The leader of the party is elected by the political party. → The political party elects the leader of the party.

The full costs of their care are met by the NHS. → The NHS meets the full costs of their care.

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Changing voice: Activity 1

Two guards examined the BMW. → The BMW was examined by two guards.

Renoir painted the same road a few months later. → The same road was painted by Renoir a few months later. Or 'The same road was painted a few months later by Renoir' is also acceptable.

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Passives in use: Activity

Extract A (from a student exam paper on emotion)

Furthermore there is evidence that supports these bodily changes as being essential to an emotional state. This evidence involved testing patients with spine severances. The patients were interviewed and tested in a laboratory and results consistently showed that the higher the spine severance the less patients reported being able to ‘feel’ an emotion.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Active or passive?

Indicate whether each example is active or passive:

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies