Passive In Factual Text

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

When learning about factual text, you will find objects or things as the subjects. For example when we talk about pen, the sentences in paragraphs will mostly begin with the pen itself or its pronoun, like "The pen is red, it is made in Indonesia, it is sharpened with sharpener, it is put in my pencil box, it was bought by my mother, and its' color is blue". Do you know why? Because we are talking about it, the pen is the title, so it becomes our subject idea.

The consequence is, it is passively treated because pen or thing is not a living thing. They cannot move or act by themselves. They need to be moved. Compare with human as subjects, for example student. "Students wear uniform, they go to school everday, they bring books and put them in their bags, they pay attention on teacher in the class, and they go home after that".

Do you see the difference? Betwen sentences of "pen" and sentences of "students"? Yes, the difference is on the structure, one is passive, and the other one is active. I am sure you are familiar with the active, but how about the passive? May be yes, may be no, that's why we are going to learn about it.

Passive

When learning about passive, we have to memorize the structure. Why? Because we are Indonesian. Please don't use your "feeling" because Indonesians have different "feeling" in language, different from western people. So use your memory to remember the structure. This is the simple structure of passive

Subject + to be + Verb 3

Example: My clothes are washed every day. This example is in present tense because the time is "everyday". How about other tenses? There will be a little difference but with the same basic structure.

Simple tenses

Subect + to be + Verb 3

Simple present                                 My clothes are washed                                

Simple Past                                        My clothes were washed yesterday

Present Perfect                                My clothes have been washed

Past Perfect                                       My clothes had been washed before I came home yesterday

Modals                                                 My clothes should be washed soon   

Continuous (progressive) tenses

Subject + to be + being + Verb 3

Simple present continuous          My clothes are being washed

Simple Past Continuos                   My clothes were being washed at 8 o'clock yesterday  

Present perfect Continuous        My clothes have been being washed

Past Perfect Continuos                  My clothes had been being washed for 5 minutes before I ate    

How about the negative form? This is one example "My clothes are not washed"

How about interrogative? "Are my clothes washed?"

Using "by"

For some cases, we use "by" to indicate the person who do something on the thing (or the doer), but it is optional, depends on our need.    

Example: "The money is taken by my mother" or just "The money is taken"

                   "The water was boiled by my sister"  or just "The water was boiled"

                               

After learning passive structure, I hope we can write factual text correctly. Just focus on your subjects and use the passive structure for the sentences.

Exercise: These are active sentences, please change into the passive ones

• I use my laptop to write letter every week
• They watched movie last night  
• She has driven the truck for an hour
• We can make instant noodle easily
• My father types his work on laptop
• The students brought some water to school yesterday
• The teachers will buy new books via online
• The police was investigating the robbery last night
• My family was eating dinner last night
• The principal has signed some letters in his office.  

Rosulullah shallallahu 'alaihi wa salam said "Indeed, people with collection of properties are people who has little reward in yaumul akhir, except people who have been given properties by Allah, then he gives them to people next to his right, left, front, and back. He does good things on his properties".   

Wallahu 'alam