Passive Voice Formation - Advanced Practice

Advanced Practice

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For each set of grammatically correct active and passive sentences, first select which sentence is stylistically more effective from the choices, and second, explain your choice in complete sentences in the text boxes. 

Please note, there may be multiple ways to write your explanation although you will see only one option after you submit each response. Compare your explanation to the one provided and determine if one is more effective.

You must respond to each question before the AGG response will be displayed. After you submit each response, you will see the AGG response, but you won’t be able to see your response until the end. After the quiz, you will be able to review the summary of responses including the original sentence, your own response and the AGG revision. This quiz has 8 questions.

Example:

  • Passive: Much research was being done on babies to understand their way of learning.
  • Active: Scientists were doing much research on babies to understand their way of learning.

Explain why your choice is more effective.

AGG Response: Passive is preferred

The passive is preferred as the sentence emphasizes the research, rather than any doer of the research. Using the active and inserting a doer narrows the scope of the action considerably and may exclude others who could conduct this research (for example, educators). Furthermore, the passive voice is often a convention used in scientific writing.

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