Listening & speaking use of passives

Speak about everything >> When seeking to improve at anything, you must take yourself out of your comfort zone. So that means speaking about subjects that you don’t normally cover in English.

  For example, your English connected to your specific business areas may be quite proficient, but the difficulty will arise when you exit your ‘subject comfort zone’. Practising speaking about other the activities of other business units within your organisation is a good idea here.

You may wonder how this relates to business activities. And of course, the vocabulary, mostly, was irrelevant.

  However, we spoke using every possible verb tense and worked on his fluency almost without him even realising that he was improving his English. Because he was enjoying talking about a subject he was passionate about, gaining confidence in his English along the way.

But also speak particularly about the things you enjoy.

In terms of football, we spoke about previous results (past) the best players (present), the form of the players and teams (present continuous) and made our predictions for future results (future).

Use of Passive

Passive voice is used when the focus is on the action. It is not important or not known, however, who or what is performing the action. Example:

My bike was stolen

  In the example above, the focus is on the fact that my bike was stolen. I do not know, however, who did it.

  Sometimes a statement in passive is more polite than active voice, as the following example shows:

 Example: A mistake was made 

In this case, I focus on the fact that a mistake was made, but I do not blame anyone (e.g. You have made a mistake.).

Form of Passive