This document provides instruction on active and passive sentences in Indonesian. It explains that active sentences have the subject at the beginning and focus on the doer of the action, while passive sentences have the object at the beginning and focus on the thing being acted upon. Learners are provided example active and passive sentences and asked to practice writing their own, first in Indonesian and then in English. The purpose of learning passive sentences is also culturally explained.

1. Active vs Passive
sentences
Year 9 Indo Term 3

2. Basic verb sentence
• A basic sentence in Indonesian looks like this:
– Siti membaca koran. (Siti reads the newspaper.)
In this sentence who is doing the action?
What is the action?
Who or What is the action being done to?
The ‘do-er’ is the SUBJECT of the sentence
The action is the VERB
The thing the verb is being done to it the OBJECT

3. Write 3 sentences like the one on the
previous slide:
• Some useful vocab
– Memasak- to cook
– Membaca – to read
– Menulis- to write
– Menonton- to
watch
– Mendengarkan- to
listen to
– Kue- a cake
– Musik- music
– Televisi- TV
– Buku- a book
– Surat- a letter
– Film- a film
– Band- a band

4. Now circle the subject of your
sentences
– Eg. Matt memasak nasi goreng.
– Sarah membaca buku.
Then underline the verb of your
sentences
– Eg. Matt memasak nasi goreng.
– Sarah membaca buku.

5. Now draw an arrow pointing to the
objects of your sentences
– Eg. Matt memasak nasi goreng.
– Sarah membaca buku.

6. Subject focus
• When the subject of your
sentence is at the front, this is
known as a subject focus
sentence. It can also be called
an active sentence.

7. Object focus
• When the object of your
sentence is at the front, this is
known as a object focus
sentence. It can also be called
an passive sentence.

8. Practise writing 3 ENGLISH PASSIVE
sentences
• E.g. The fried rice was cooked by
Matt.
• E.g. The film was watched by Alison.

9. • These might sound strange to you as we don’t
use these sentences much in English. You are
most likely to read or hear them on the news.
Have a look at this news report and find the
passive sentences.

10. • But in Indonesia, Passive sentences are very
common. This is for cultural reasons. In
Indonesia (and many other Asian societies)
they like to put other people first and they
show this in their language as well.

11. Making passive sentences from
active ones in Indonesian:
• Remember our first sentence?
• Siti membaca koran. (Siti reads the newspaper.)
• Siti=subject membaca=verb and koran=object
• Is this an ACTIVE or PASSIVE sentence? How
do you know?
• To change this sentence (for THIRD PERSON)
we need to do the following steps:

12. • 1. Write the object first (and if there is anything
describing the object keep that as well)
• E.g. Koran
• 2. Think of the verb and work out what the base word is,
e.g. membaca- base word =baca
• Take the base word and put the letters di on the front
of it
• E.g. Koran dibaca
• 3. Write the subject.
• E.g. Koran dibaca Siti.
• *if it makes more sense to you, you can also write the word
‘oleh’ (by) in front of the subject
• E.g. Koran dibaca oleh Siti (the newspaper was read BY Siti.

13. Practise changing these together:
• 1. Daniel mentonton televisi.
• 2. Sally menulis surat.
• 3. Sam memasak ayam goreng.
• 4. Steve menonton film tentang kambing.
• 5. John menulis surat kepada temannya.

14. Now go back to your
first 3 sentences and
change them to
PASSIVE structure.