The passive voice is used when the focus is on the person or object experiencing the action. 'Was discovered' is the correct past passive form for the sentence about America's discovery.
The passive voice (be + past participle) is used when the focus is on the recipient of the action, not the doer. 'Was discovered' is the past simple passive form, appropriate for the discovery of America in 1492.
| Task | America ________________(to discover) in 1492. |
|---|---|
| Answer | 1 |
| a | was discovered |
| b | is discovered |
| c | discovered |
| d | discovers |
| comment | The passive voice is used when the focus is on the action and the main topic of the sentence isn’t who did the action. We use the passive voice to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action.In the test sentence ‘America ________________ (to discover) in 1492.’ we show interest in America that experienced its discovery, the focus is on America’s discovery and not on the person who discoveredAmerica. In English we tend to put the most important thing at the start of the sentence.We make the passive using ‘be’ (in a suitable tense) + the past participle: be + done. The passive can be used with all tenses - the form of ‘be’ changes. We use passive forms of tenses in the same way as we use their active equivalents.America’s discovery is the fact of the past and in the test sentence the exact year is given when that event happened – 1492 – long ago, that means that we should use the past simple in this sentence. Therefore,we choose ANSWER 1 – ‘was discovered’. |
| topic | passive voice |
| level | 1 |
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