Section 4 / Lesson 1 - The Passive Voice
In Section 4, we will look at a new 3rd type of Writing Task One question, describing a process. Once again, this section is split into five classes. The first four will look at different vocabulary and grammar that you can use in your answer and the final lesson will bring it all together into an answer. As always, this builds on the previous sections and you will need to use the ideas covered in sections 1, 2, and 3.
In this first class, I will first introduce this new type of question before looking at how to use the passive voice in our answers. It's a fairly simple structure, but it's very easy to make a mistake. We'll also look briefly at tense choice. However, for this type of question, this is fairly easy. Use the present tense.
The question type
Some IELTS Writing Task One questions will ask you to describe a process. This could be a natural process like the life cycle of a frog, or it could human process such as describing how a wind turbine generates electricity. You do not need to know anything about the process, as you only use the information given to you in the diagram.
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Our basic structure is the same:
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Paraphrase the topic from the question
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Overview the whole Process
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Body 1 - Describe half the process
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Body 2 - Describe the other half of this process.
The Passive Voice
If you look at the wind turbine question example, who is generating the electricity? Does it matter? When the answer is no, we need to use passive voice and focus on the action instead. This true for almost all human made processes.
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The technician applies the brake to stop the process.
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We do not really want to focus on the technician here:
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Blue is the object of the first sentence which we make our subject.
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Green to the verb 'to be'. We add this to give the tense to the sentence. In our case, we are using present simple.
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is / are / am - present tense​​
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has been - present perfect tense
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was / were - past simple tense
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had been - past perfect tense
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will be / is going to be - future tenses
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Orange is our main verb. No matter what the tense, we put this in the 3rd form of the verb.
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1st - apply / see​ / is
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2nd - applied / saw / was
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3rd - applied / seen / been
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Purple is a preposition phrase that we use to add detail to the sentence. This stays the same.​
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Red is our original subject. This can be added after 'by', but can also be left out.
Transitive vs. Intransitive Verbs
We need to be very careful with some types of verb. If you look at this sentence:
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The eggs hatch.
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The verb 'hatch' is not done by anything. You cannot hatch an egg, it happens naturally. If it cannot be done by someone or something, then we cannot use passive voice.
Rule: natural process = intransitive verbs = no passive voice
Tense Choice
Passive voice can be used for any tense:
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Yesterday, the brake was applied by the technician.
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Tomorrow, the brake will be applied by the technician.
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The brake has been applied by the technician 5 times.
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However, for the vast majority of process diagrams, we will be using the present simple. This is because usually, a process can be done at any time by any person.
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Important - Unless it states a specific time in the question, use the present tense!