Passive Voice Activities – Get Active with the Passive

Tried and tested passive voice activities for the EFL classroom.


Online Passive Voice Exercises and Activities

You can find online passive voice exercises and activities at our online-focused site LearnHip.com.


Conspiracy Theory Match

This conspiracy theory activity may not be appropriate in every context, use your judgement, but most students will probably know about and have strong opinions about at least some of these conspiracy theories, so as well as being a useful way of presenting the passive, the exercise is also very effective at sparking lively discussions.

My Car’s Been Stolen!

This is a codebreaking activity to show the passive in use with a variety of different tenses. It may well spark questions about different tense use, so be prepared.

Passive Party

This is a fun activity to practise past simple activities with some damage related vocabulary.

Give each student a copy of the Passive Party worksheet and gradually work through the examples. See how long it is until they can spot the pattern i.e., that the verb needed has the same first two letters as the protagonist’s name.

Once the sheet has been filled in. Ask the students to turn over the sheet and ask them what happened to each of the damaged items. They should reply using the passive.

For example:

What happened to the bathroom?

– It was flooded.

If the student can’t remember you can help them by prompting who the person was.

I think it was David that did it.

What’s Being Done? – Picture Set

For each picture in this passive voice picture set [learnhip.com], students should use the passive form of the present continuous to describe what is happening.

Passive Voice Jeopardy Questions

On the Jeopardy page there is a set of Jeopardy questions designed for practising the passive. You could always just use them for a simple class quiz.

One thought on “Passive Voice Activities – Get Active with the Passive

  1. I had 3 classes teaching passive voice to my level IV students and I was looking for more creative ideas to review it and this is perfect! Thank you very much, these are very fun and creative and great

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