Passive voice fun

Even though it’s terribly difficult to devise practice and production (i.e., output) activities that somehow naturally “trap” a certain structure, creating language presentation tasks (whether you want to call them noticing, consciousness raising or whatever) that illustrate a certain language area is, thank God, less of a daunting task.

As some of you will recall, a few posts ago, I specifically talked about a certain genre (customer reviews) that tends to naturally “trap” lots of present perfect examples. Today, I want to focus on the passive voice, which, according to my google statistics, happens to be one of the most popular search terms.

Have you ever noticed how people who write computer-generated messages make use of the passive voice more than any other structure? Look:

But what if you had the power to create your own messages, using active / passive voice combinations in whatever way you saw fit?

Well, as it turns out, you do. Access this site, type in your own computer message (anything you like!) and you’ve got yourself a nice, believable-looking message window. Then, copy the image (right-click) and paste it wherever you like.

Depending on your message, you can create fun, no-nonsense and realistic grammar presentation or practice activities.

For more advanced students, check out this post.