An ACtIVE PaSSIvE AcTIvITY
Some kinds of gammatical structures are easy to make up speaking activities about. Past tense? Talk about what you did last weekend. Future tense? Make a plan for an imaginary trip around the world. Present Perfect? Say, have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Others however defy such simply yet effective ploys, and one of these is the passive.
The passive is formed by using 'is' or 'are' plus the third form of the verb. We use it when the object of the sentence is more interesting or important to us than what or who did something. For example:
A lot of pornography IS FILMED in Eastern Europe now.
Glock handguns ARE MADE in Austria
Because, of course, the pornography is of much more interest to us than the Eastern Europeans who make it. In the second case it's obvious who makes Glock handguns -- the Glock company -- so we don't need to say who did it.
We can use the passive if we don't know who did something, also, and there's no problem with changing it to the past tense:
Holy shit! My passport WAS STOLEN while I was passed out drunk!
Now this is all very well and good, but what do you do after your students have diligently transfomed a bunch of sentences in the textbook from active to passive and back to active again? How can we make a speaking activity to get them to use it?
Well, try this.
Draw something like this on the board:
Now point out to the students that by applying this formula they can make different questions: all they have to do is replace the "?" with something relevant.
Who was TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE directed by?
and the fabulously passive answer: It was directed by Tobe Hooper.
When was the film TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II made?
and we might passively respond: it was made in 1986.
Where was TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III filmed?
And we can't help but respond in the passive: It was filmed in California, and that's part of the reason it sucked so much ass.
So put the students in pairs and have them try to think up some questions like that to stump each other.
Most of them won't know much of anything about anything, of course, and that can be a problem. For particularly dense or recalcitrant classes you might have to write out a list of facts --
Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon.
Gustave Eiffel designed the Statue of Liberty
Van Gogh painted SUNFLOWERS.
Gregory Dark the porn director directed Britney Spears "OOPS I DID IT AGAIN" video.
-- that they can then make questions and answers about, but of course they'll have to do it in the passive.
That takes a lot more time, of course, but remember, once you've compiled your list, you can use it again and again.
And after they've asked each other some questions, play a game of "TEST THE TEACHER'S INCREDIBLY LARGE BRAIN." Have them ask you some passive questions and see how many you know the answer to.
Probably a bunch. You're way the fuck more knowledgeable than most of your students, believe it.