Passives and Causatives B1/B2

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Passives and Causatives B1/B2

Passives

Use: To not say who or what did an action.  You don’t say who did something.

Form: The verb to be in the tense that you’re using and then with the past participle

Examples:

The house was broken into.

The bird was killed.

You can say who did the action by adding ‘by …..’   – This is when the person who did something is important:

The house was broken into by a gang of robbers.

The bird was killed by a hunter.

Othello was written by ……….

We use passives a lot in academic writing.  And is newspaper articles when it’s not important who did something.   Or when it’s obvious who did the action.

 

Causatives:  Verbs to cause things to happen – they combine with other verbs

Have/get something done.  When people do things for you.  Like an oficial services.

I’m having my hair cut.

Get someone to do something is to ‘persuade’

I can’t get my friend to come with me to the party.

Have you ever tried to get people to do something and failed?

Let — Like to allow.

Let them eat cake

Let’s dance…

Make – to force people or things to do something

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

If you were supreme leader of the world what would you let people do?  And what would you make people do?

Help

Tell us about a time when you helped people to do something or when someone helped you to do something.

 

Other grammar points here

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