Exercise 3

THE PASSIVE VOICE
Gap-fill exercise

Fill in all the gaps with the appropriate active or passive forms of the verbs in brackets. Then press "Check" to check your answers. Use the "Hint" button to get a free letter if an answer is giving you trouble. You can also click on the "[?]" button to get a clue. Note that you will lose points if you ask for hints or clues!


Use the Passive voice:
1) when the object of the verb rather than the subject (the agent) is the focus of the sentence.
The President was honoured by his staff at a special meeting.
2) when the agent is obvious, not important or unknown.
A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
I’m being sent all sorts of spam about weight loss.
3) to create a distance between the agent and the action, for example to avoid responsibility.
Your ideas will be considered and the good ones put into effect.
All complaints will be taken seriously.
4) in more formal texts (e.g. academic writing, business reports) and certain text types (e.g. newspaper articles, radio/TV news).
No survivors have been found in the disaster.

Technology Update

Currently hundreds of trainee medical students (teach) through the online virtual world Second Life. Once a day students (send) to locations in the online world to treat computer generated patients. When they are there, virtual equipment can (use) to check the patients at the scene and then the trainees can (decide) the best course of action.
The training tool has been a great success so far and from next year it (use) at a number of medical schools around the world.

Pollution is an ever-growing problem in our cities but in the near future a new system (allow) traffic managers to identify pollution hotspots. The movement of cars through the city will be able to (alter) by changing the traffic light sequencing to direct cars away from problem areas. A computer ( also/send) commuters warning text alerts on their mobile phones so they can decide how to avoid the hotspot. The new pollution monitoring system (test) successfully for the first time at a trial last month and could (introduce) as soon as next year.