THE PASSIVE

In an active sentence, the subject is the person or thing that performs the action:

► Masked thieves stole a valuable painting from the museum last night.

When you make this into a passive sentence, the object of the verb becomes the subject:

► A valuable painting was stolen from the museum last night.

The passive is formed with the auxiliary verb be and the past participle of the verb

►The painting is valued at 2 million dollars.

►The lock had been broken and the cameras had been switched off.

►Other museums have been warned to take extra care.

►Staff at the museum will be questioned by police tomorrow.

►Museum security is to be improved.

USE THE PASSIVE:

• When you do not know who performed the action, or when this information is not important. It is common in formal writing, for example scientific writing:

►The liquid is heated to 60⁰ and then filtered.

NOTE: If you want to mention who performed the action, you use BY at the end of the sentence:

            ► The thief is being investigated by the police.

• When you want to save new or important information until the end of the sentence for emphasis:

► The picture was painted by Constable.

It is possible to put a verb that has two objects into the passive:

            ► (active) The director told the staff the news this morning.

            ► (passive) The staff were told the news this morning.

CONDITIONALS

Sentences with if are used to express possibilities

FIRST CONDITIONAL

• Used to talk about the consequence of a possible  actions:

► If I write my essay this afternoon, I will have time to go out tonight. ( it is still in the morning, and it is quite possible that I will do it)

SECOND CONDITIONAL

• Used to talk about the consequence of a hypothetical action

► If I wrote my essay this afternoon, I would have time to go out tonight.

THIRD CONDITIONAL

• Used to talk about the possible consequence of an action that did not happen:

► If I had written my essay this afternoon, I would have had time to go out tonight.

ZERO CONDITIONAL

Sometimes sentences with if express certainty rather than possibility. The zero conditional is used to talk about something that is always true or that was always true in the past:

► If you mix blue and red, you get purple. (present simple in both parts of the sentence)

► If I asked her to come with us, she always said no. (past simple in both parts of the sentence)