Building Cars Live - a good resource for teaching the passive voice

Watching the BBC’s Building Cars Live this week I felt I should post my thoughts on using this as a resource in Year 6 to teach/consolidate learning of the passive voice.  I’ve linked a few clips and some of the transcribed sentences I would use to exemplify the passive.  There are only a couple of examples in each clip and this is important for children to note.  The passive should not be overused and is only necessary in certain situations:

• We don’t know who the agent is: The artworks were stolen overnight on Friday. (We don't know who stole them.)
• The agent is not important in the text: The cars are transported to destinations in Britain and around the world. (We are not interested in who transports them.)
• You want to be vague about who is responsible: Responses to the Consultation Document have been considered and amendments made. (We are not informed who is responsible for the consideration and amendment.  This use of the passive often appears in official writing!)
• The focus of the sentence is the person or thing being acted on, so the agent may not be mentioned or will appear later in the sentence: Mini Coopers are manufactured at the Oxford plant.  Mini Cooper frames are constructed by robots.
• Texts that rely on the passive voice, e.g. some scientific writing: The seeds were planted in the pots and left in different places to germinate.  Observations were made each day to monitor growth.
• In some general truths: Rules are made to be broken.  They were made for each other.

Duvet wearing robots that can open car doors

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035f11v

This clip contains the following sentences, which I would unpick for children as examples of how the passive is formed: a form of the verb ‘be’ as the auxiliary, followed by the past participle of the main verb.  Both uses are present simple passive.

• The jackets are used to keep the robots at an ambient temperature …
• All this data is carefully collected.

James May meets a singing trolley called Dougal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035dwsq

• Toyoto are obsessed with their quest for continuous improvement.  (This sentence highlights that in some passive constructions we use ‘with’ instead of ‘by’.)
• That’s steered by a wiper motor from an Avensis.   (Children will be able to see that we can use contracted forms of ‘be’ as the auxiliary for the passive construction.)

Meet the factory

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035cv4x

• The following example show the first use of the passive voice constructed with the auxiliary but, because we have another passive used in the same sentence, the auxiliary is omitted to make the structure more efficient: Steel panels are pressed in Swindon; engines manufactured in Birmingham …
• This example repeats this structure, but with a list of passives: Once built the cars are driven for the first time, tested, inspected, wrapped and sent out into the world.

How to build a car in less than 2 minutes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035dk01

This clip shows the car’s construction ‘journey’ through the factory, without commentary.  This could be used for children to produce examples of sentences using the passive voice (e.g. The car frame is welded by robots.  The car is dusted in the Emu, using ostrich feathers.  Cars are parked in the huge car park.)  Before they view this clip, they will need to have seen and discussed a number of the other clips from the programme so they understand the speeded-up content.  They will need to see this clip a few times to recognise the procedures and I suggest you model writing one or two passive structures first.

As a group or class, collect their sentences in sequential order to explain the processes in constructing a car.   Trying to structure an explanatory text using the sentences from the above activity, will highlight that overuse of the passive doesn’t work well.  Re-writing using a few, well-placed passives (chosen for correct reasons) and a range of other verb forms will help children understand that variation of verb forms and tenses is required in this type of text, but will also provide opportunity for developing:

• appropriate style and vocabulary to maintain the reader’s interest throughout.
• make choices in drafting and revising writing, showing understanding of how these enhance meaning.
• proof read for grammatical sense (e.g. subject/verb agreements, correct tense use).

I’m sure teachers will be able to find more examples in some of the other clips on the BBC website.  Actually the language used during filming contains many examples of other verb tenses or forms appropriate to non-fiction writing, so could be a useful resource for revision.

Standard English and the subjunctive mood

Just before Christmas my husband was watching football and I heard one of the managers speaking in a post-match interview.  During that short discourse, I heard him say ‘I was’, ‘he was’, ‘it was’, ‘we was’ and ‘they was’.  No doubt, if he came from another part of the country, I would have heard‘ I were’, ‘he were’, ‘it were’, ‘we were’ and ‘they were’.  Now I have nothing against local dialects: the diversity in grammar and vocabulary found in different dialects gives our language richness and character.  If we are curious enough to investigate a dialect and its accent, we find out much about an area’s history, environment and way of life.  However, working with teachers, I am aware of the criticism they frequently receive about the way children speak and write, so I am alert to the different dialects I hear around me (including the Standard English dialect) and then my appropriateness radar switches on.

As teachers, we are charged with the task of teaching children to speak and write in Standard English, but that task is challenging when another dialect is spoken outside school by family, friends and community.   In addition, children are constantly hearing different dialects on television and radio.  Of course, the worst thing we can do is to tell children they are wrong to speak in dialect.  They are not wrong and we should value the rich variation in language that dialect provides.  It is a community’s natural, default speech pattern and we are only going to upset children and parents by trying to substitute it with Standard English.  What we need to do is provide children with an understanding that Standard English is useful for communicating with people outside of their dialect area and for specific formal purposes.  Then they have choice: knowledge of two different ways of communicating and the skill of understanding appropriate time and place for using each.

What is really annoying is poor usage of grammar within the Standard English dialect, particularly when it is broadcast through television and radio and perpetuated within the business community – the very people complaining about school leavers’ standards of literacy.  Subject-verb ‘disagreement’ and sloppy use of adverbs are a daily occurrence in the media and I’ve forgotten the times I’ve heard incorrect use of subject and object pronouns on programmes such as ‘The One Show’ and in phone conversations with business representatives.   Poor usage is rife in the corporate world and can be experienced almost daily in spoken and written advertising, business forms, promotional literature, phone communication and listening to company spokespeople in the media.  Correct usage of Standard English is also not helped by the incredible amount of business jargon that is bandied about.  I recently heard about developments in the ‘business stream’ and the fact that people were ‘onboarded’.  It’s no good business leaders complaining about standards of English, if they are not prepared to promote clear meaning and correct Standard English in their own companies.

In spite of this, in the grammar islands that are our classrooms, we will continue to rise to the challenge and develop children’s understanding of Standard English.  One of the priority areas in this struggle is subject-verb agreement.  However, in the new National Curriculum, the government is now proposing that we should also teach primary children the subjunctive mood, where subject-verb agreement alters in the third person singular.  Surely this is a step too far?  Use of the subjunctive mood is fairly rare in English and, although it expresses the hypothetical, our language has a range of modal verbs that do the same job, with less confusion to children who may still not be secure in their use of third person singular forms of our verbs. 

It would be better if the government also switched on their appropriateness radar and considered what eleven year old children need to focus on when learning the Standard English dialect.  The skill of speaking and writing for formal occasions has a progression, like any other area of learning.  In my opinion, the optional use of the subjunctive mood in formal speeches and documents does not belong in primary education and I would suggest that valuable classroom time may well be better spent developing understanding of those features of Standard English which will enable children to communicate effectively, confidently and clearly in situations where this dialect is appropriate.

If you would like further information on the subjunctive, click here. 

The passive voice - using different verb tenses and forms

A colleague asked me the other day about using the passive in different verb tenses and forms and what these would look like.  Most teachers are fairly confident in using the simple present and simple past passive forms, but it is important to know what the other forms look like, especially when identifying good examples in authentic texts to use in class.   

As the passive is included in the statutory appendix of the 2014 National Curriculum and is required teaching for year 6 pupils, I thought it might be useful to post some key subject knowledge about the active and passive voices and detail the most common passive tenses and forms, with examples.

Most of the sentences we write are in the active voice.  In this structure, the subject of the sentence is the person or thing which is doing the action and the object of the sentence is what is being affected by the action.  For example:

The dog      chased       the cat.

subject               verb               object

doing the      (active form)       affected by

action                                       the action

The passive voice is formed by using a form of the verb ‘be’ and the past participle of the main verb.  In the passive, the person or thing being affected by the action becomes the subject of the sentence; the person or thing doing the action may or may not be provided.  For example:

The cat        was chased.

subject          verb (past passive form)

affected

by action

The cat        was chased          by the dog

subject                     verb                       preposition + the agent

affected         (past passive form)         doing the action

by action

Below are examples of different tenses and verb forms in the passive, using the main verb ‘fly’.  The list isn’t exhaustive, but provides the most common variations and a few less usual ones.

She is flown.                                             Simple present passive

She was flown.                                          Simple past passive

She is being flown.                                     Present continuous passive

She was being flown.                                 Past continuous passive

She has been flown.                                  Present perfect passive

She had been flown.                                  Past perfect passive

She will be flown.                                      Simple future passive

She is going to be flown.                           Simple future passive (is going to)

She will be being flown.                             Future continuous passive

She is going to be being flown.                   Future continuous passive (although I find this an ugly structure)

She has been being flown.                         Present perfect continuous passive

She had been being flown.                         Past perfect continuous passive

She will have been flown.                           Future perfect passive

She is going to have been flown.                 Future perfect passive

She could have been flown.                       Conditional present perfect passive

She would have been being flown.              Conditional present perfect continuous passive

It will be important for children to understand that we use the passive to create more formality in writing and that it is often used to distance the writer from the content being presented.  In some cases this enables the writer to ‘hide’ responsibility.  For example, the omission of the agent in the sentence below would hide who to blame or to thank, depending on your point of view and occupation.  (Although for many teachers I know, this would be a shorter working day!)

‘It has been decided to extend the school day to 9.00 pm.’

Of course, when writing, we may not know who the agent is and cannot include this information in our sentence.  For example, in journalistic writing, the perpetrator of a crime may not be known: The statue was damaged last night, at around ten.

Guardian Grammar Quiz

 Do these sorts of quizzes really help teachers or students or do they add to confusion about the way the English language is structured?

While I have no problem with many of the questions, why have they included the two below?


Question 5
Which of the following sentences uses a subordinate clause at the beginning?

1.  Male penguins keep warm by huddling together
2.  In order to stay alive, male penguins keep warm by huddling together
3.  Huddling together helps male penguis to stay alive and keep warm

You only have the option of ticking one sentence, yet two begin with subordinate clauses.  Number 2 starts with an adverbial subordinate clauses, using the conjunction 'In order to'.  No problem if this was the only subordinate clause.  However, number 3 also starts with a subordinate clause.  'Huddling together' is a nominal clause filling the subject slot of the main clause.  There is also a nominal non-finite (infinitive) clause filling the object slot and, in addition, this has a compound structure as it contains the verbs 'stay' and 'keep' linked by the co-ordinating conjunction 'and'. 

 Huddling together       helps       male penguins to stay alive and keep warm
        Subject (S)       Verb (V)                         Object (O)

The nominal clause, 'Huddling together' is created by using the non-finite (present participle) form of the verb 'huddle'.

So this sentence has four verbs (huddling, helps, to stay and (to) keep), making four clauses in all.  I do hope this is not what we will find in the Year 6 grammar and punctuation test!

I also have concern about question 12.
Identify the main clause in the following sentence:
The rescuers, who were drafted in by the officials, were stunned by the destruction.
1.  The rescuers
2.  The rescuers were stunned
3.  Who were drafted in by the officials

Why do they not include the instrumentative 'by the destruction' as part of the main clause?  Surely the whole sentence, with  the relative (subordinate) clause removed, would read 'The rescuers were stunned by the destruction.'  This is a passive equivalent of the sentence 'The destruction stunned the rescuers.'

Testing children's knowledge of grammar is not going to make them better writers and, in my opinion, we shouldn't be wasting valuable teaching time on grammar tests.  Far better to explore, discuss and experiment with the wonderful variety of structures that English provides and consider how we can use these to create and vary effects for our readers.  Our language is very complex and to try and simplify it for tests is a complex business in itself.  Those who are driven to provide test materials and worksheets for teachers and children have a real responsibility to make sure that the aspect they are testing is unambiguous and the question only tests the structure they intended to test.