KISS Level 5.7 - Passive Voice and Retained Complements

Jan. 22, 2013

KISS Level 5.7 - Passive Voice and Retained Complements

Notes for Teachers
Exercises in KISS Level 5.7
Ex. 1 a and b, Identifying Passive Voice
Ex. 2, Passive Voice or Predicate Adjective?
Ex. 3 a - d, Rewriting from Passive Voice into Active and from Active to Passive
Ex. 4, Simple Retained Complements
Ex. 5, Retained Complements - Clauses
Ex. 6, Retained Complements - Infinitives
Ex. 7, Retained Complements - Mixed
Ex. 8, "To be to" - Ellipsed Passive plus an Infinitive?
Ex. 9, A Passage for Analysis
Ex. 10, Treasure Hunt

Notes for Teachers

Why Teach (or Study) Active and Passive Voice?

The active / passive voice distinction is not central to sentence structure — it is not primarily a question of nexus or modification. This means that students do not need the distinction in order to explain how every word in any sentence chunks to the main S/V/C pattern. Why then should they learn it? There are two answers to that question. First, it is important to good reading. Passive voice eliminates the "doer" of the action expressed in the verb and thereby side-steps the question of responsibility:

Taxes were raised.
A bomb was dropped.
Workers were laid off. People who recognize passive voice are much more likely to ask "Who raised the taxes?" "Who dropped the bomb?" "Who laid off the workers?" And, in turn, the "Who?" question leads to "Why?" Some teachers believe that the ability to recognize passive voice makes students more responsible readers — and more effective citizens.
Unfortunately, other teachers forbid the use of passive voice. This is somewhat silly in that these teachers forbid the use of passive voice in a context in which most students can't recognize passive voice in the first place. The result is that the teachers object to passive voice, when they recognize it in the students' writing, but students, not understanding, simply do what the teacher says and shrug off the question. Thus, the second reason for teaching passive voice, especially in a KISS context, is to enable students to understand — and even object to — what these extremist teachers are demanding.
If passive voice did not have an important function in the language, it would not exist in the first place. There are, as noted above, many cases in which the doer of the action is not known. But there are many cases in which the doer is either obvious or irrelevant, for example, "In this restoration project, the houses on Liberty Street will be torn down." And there are cases in which the flow and focus of the information makes the passive more effective — "Tom Jones died Wednesday. He was killed in an automobile accident." The focus here is on Tom Jones, and thus putting "He" in the subject position makes much more sense than does "An automobile accident killed him." Instead of simply forbidding passive voice, teachers should enable students to recognize it, and then discuss the options — and the effects of these options — that passive voice provides. Virginia Tufte presents an excellent explanation of the advantages of passive voice (plus numerous examples) in her Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. (Graphics Press, 2006).

The Exercises in this Level

Exercises 1 a and b - Identifying Passive Voice

As suggested above, the main problem in the teaching of passive voice is that students are not taught how to identify verbs in the first place. By the time they get to this KISS Level, however, most students should be experts at identifying subjects and finite verbs. Thus recognizing passives should be relatively easy -- and meaningful. The first two exercises in this level simply help students recognize passive verbs as passives.

Exercise 2 - Passive Verb or Predicate Adjective?

The passive voice slides into predicate adjectives. For examples, consider two sentences:

a.) The ground was always frozen in the winter.
b.) Bill was told that by a friend.

In (a.) "was frozen" is passive in form, but rarely, if ever, would anyone state who or what froze it. The focus of the sentence is on the state (condition) of the ground. Thus, although the verb form is passive, we can justifiably consider "frozen" a predicate adjective. Sentence (b.), however, is definitely a passive verb because its active version is "A friend told Bill that."
When they are first learning to identify verb phrases, many students will mark "told" as a predicate adjective. To address this problem, Exercise 9 back in Level 1.2 (Adding Complements) pushed students to underline twice all passive verb forms. There, in other words, they were encouraged to underline both "was frozen" and "was told" twice. Here, however, students should be ready to understand and discuss the distinction.

Exercises 3 a - d - Rewriting from Passive to Active or Active to Passive

Seeing and manipulating are, of course, two different things. Exercises 4 and 5 give students sentences in one voice and ask them to rewrite in the other. There are actually four exercises here. Exercises 4a and 4b are relatively simple sentences not based on real texts. These exercises are included in the books for every grade level. Exercises 5a and 5b are based on real texts and are different in every grade level book.

Exercise 4 through 7 - Retained Complements

In a sentence such as "Sally was given a reward," "reward" is considered a retained complement, retained from the active voice version, "They gave Sally a reward." In analyzing randomly selected sentences you will probably find that most retained complements are either infinitives or subordinate clauses. Thus KISS includes exercises that focus on each of these, followed by a "mixed" exercise.

Exercise 8 - "To be to"

In analyzing randomly selected sentences, you may frequently run into cases of "to be" plus an infinitive. They involve ellipsis and can be explained in two ways. Depending on the context, they can be explained as active voice:

I was to sleep in my own stall.
I was *going* to sleep in my own stall. or as passives with infinitives as retained direct objects: I was *expected* to sleep in my own stall. The passive explanation is preferable when the context suggests that the subject is constrained because someone else is doing the expecting, supposing, ordering, etc. (I have never seen a grammar textbook deal with these.)

Exercise 9 - A Passage for Analysis

Thoughtful readers probably noticed that several of the points made above suggest that context is important for understanding passive voice. That is the objective of these exercises.

Exercise - 10 - A Treasure Hunt

As noted, some teachers tell students not to use passive voice. This exercise, which is the same in each grade level, invites students to find passages that contain passive voice and to explore when and why actual writers (and speakers) use it.

Suggested directions for analysis exercises:
1. Place parentheses ( ) around each prepositional phrase.
2. Underline finite verbs twice, their subjects once, and label complements ("PA," "PN," "IO," or "DO").
3. Place brackets [ ] around each subordinate clause. If the clause functions as a noun, label its function. If it functions as an adverb, draw an arrow from the opening bracket to the word that the clause modifies.
4. Place a vertical line after each main clause.
5. Write “P” over every passive verb phrase.

Exercises in KISS Level 5.7

Ex. 1 a and b -- Identifying Passive Voice

Instructional Material

Passive Voice (Maxwell L 5 7 04)