These questions ask you to keep the intended person or thing in focus, choose a passive that suits the register, or complete the special expression for birth. Decide focus and context first; only then assemble the verb phrase.
Choose the subject before choosing the passive pattern
With verbs such as give, offer, send, hand, lend, teach and promise, the active clause contains both a recipient and a thing. Either can become the passive subject. If the person is the topic, place that person first, add the correct form of be and the past participle, then retain the thing. If the thing is the topic, place it first and put the recipient after to. The two structures differ in information focus, not grammatical status.
| Decision signal | Construction to build |
|---|---|
| The recipient must remain the topic | Recipient subject plus be plus past participle plus the transferred thing. |
| The transferred thing must remain the topic | Thing subject plus be plus past participle plus to and the recipient. |
| Neutral or formal reporting | Prefer the be-passive. |
| Informal conversation about what happened to the subject | Either the be-passive or the standard get-passive may fit unless the context narrows the choice. |
| A birth is being described | Use be in the required tense and number followed by born. |
Finish with a form check. In a past simple be-passive, use was or were according to the new subject and follow it with a past participle. In a past get-passive, got itself carries the tense and is followed directly by the participle. Do not add did before got, and do not leave out the passive auxiliary.
Where the mistakes come from
- It is easy to choose a grammatical passive without first choosing its focus. Suppose a museum awards Inez a fellowship. Mark what the context wants to discuss: for an Inez-centred version, put Inez first; for a fellowship-centred version, put the fellowship first. Both routes are grammatical, so choose the new subject from the requested focus before building the passive.
- The auxiliary is dropped or the wrong verb form follows it. A passive requires an auxiliary and a past participle, so a bare past form without be, a base form after be, and an -ing form after be all fail the construction check.
- Did is added to a past get-passive. Got already carries past tense, so combining did with got duplicates the tense marking instead of forming a passive.
- Every get-passive is treated as nonstandard. The real boundary is register: get plus participle is normal in informal English, but a formal report or official notice calls for the neutral be-passive.
- Born is treated as if it were a regular verb that can take -ed or describe the newborn as performing an ongoing action. For a person's or animal's birth, choose the correct form of be and keep born unchanged.
Try it
Lina is the topic. Use the words in brackets in the past simple passive: Lina ___ at reception yesterday. (hand a visitor badge)
Complete the fixed passive expression in the past simple with the words in brackets. The rescue puppy ___ during the storm. (be born)
In an informal conversation about yesterday's downpour, select all standard passive descriptions of what happened to my coat.
- My coat soaked completely in the downpour.
- My coat got soaked while I crossed the square.
- My coat did got soaked near the bus stop.
- My coat was soaked while I crossed the square.