PASSIVE VOICE USES. TIPS TO SOLVE OPEN CLOZE EXERCISES

1. PASSIVE VOICE BY DIANELLY BERLIN & SANDY UICAB

2. The passive is formed with the appropriate tense of the verb to be + past participle: Buildings arerestored The subject of the verb in passive voice is the object of the verb in active voice: Spanish isspoken in Argentina (subject) Argentiniansspeak Spanish (object) PASSIVE VOICE ACTIVE VOICE

4. The passive is used... When the person performing the action (agent) is unknown, unimportant or obvious from the context: The thief has already been caught (by the police – obvious agent). To emphasise the agent: The maths lesson was taken by the English teacher. When we are interestedmore in the action than the agent, such as in news reports, formal notices, instructions, processes, headlines, advertisements, etc: “Crocodiles have been set free.” To make statements more formal or polite: The vase has been broken. (more polite than saying “you have broken the vase.”)

5. Open cloze exercises

6. Open cloze exercises You need to produce a word expressing a certain meaning in the given context. This word could be related to forms of collocation, or it should form a grammatically correct sentence, it should be spelled correctly and its level of formality should be chosen carefully.

7. Tips Look at the text before and after the gap. Make sure your handwriting is clear. Don’t leave your answer sheet blank for any question. If you don’t know the correct answer you should always make a guess. Collect some short texts of your own and make a text by gapping grammatical words, e.g. prepositions, articles, pronouns, etc. Practice with a friend and test each other.

8. References Evans, V. FCE use of English for the revised Cambridge examination. Express publishing [on-line]. Taken from http://www.pdfqueen.com/pdf/fc/fce-use-of-english-1/10/ Flo-Joe (2010). FCE use of English: Part 2. [on-line]. Taken from http://www.flojoe.co.uk/fce/students/strategy/p3pt2a.htm La mansión del Inglés. Vozpasiva. Taken from http://www.mansioningles.com/gram55.htm Pino, J. & Heilman, M. A Selection Strategy to Improve Cloze Question Quality. Language Technologies Institute [on-line]. Taken from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mheilman/papers/pino_cloze_its08.pdf