Passives (1) RECYCLING ADVANCED ENGLISH UNIT 9

RECYCLING ADVANCED ENGLISH

UNIT 9

Passives (1)

Passives are used whenever an action is more important than the agent – for example, in reporting the news or scientific experiments; • A woman has been arrested for the abduction of baby Emily Smith. The object of the active verb becomes the subject of the passive sentence, and the verb be is used in the correct tense with the past participle of the relevant verb. By + the agent is used only if it contributes important information: • Coastal buildings have been damaged by gales. Intransitive verbs, e.g. arrive, cannot become passive, because they have no object. Certain other verbs, e.g. let, fit, lack, resemble, suit, cannot normally become passive. After modal verbs, passive infinitives are used (see Unit 7): • He ought to be arrested. • You might have been killed. Passive -ing forms are possible: • She likes being driven to work.  • Having been fed, the dog went to sleep. A Complete the passage with the correct passive form of the verbs in brackets. An ingenious device like a bed of nails, which 1) ________ (originally use) by the great Carthaginian general Hannibal to restrain his elephants, is currently 2)________ (put) to a similar use in parts of Britain. It 3)______ (know) as the Stinger, and recently it 4) _________ (successfully deploy) in Greater Manchester and the Midlands. When a joyrider in a stolen vehicle 5 ) ________ (involve) in a police chase, the Stinger can 6 )________ (lay out) on the road in front of the speeding driver, bringing the car to an abrupt halt. Last week a car chase in Bolton, which had lasted 90 minutes, 7)________ (end) in 30 seconds, when the fugitive’s tyres 8)________ (puncture) by the Stinger.  It 9) ________ (hope) that this device will save police time and enable more joyriders to 10)_______ _____ (catch), as well as reducing the length of dangerous high-speed chases. B Follow the same instructions as for Exercise A, A recent front-page story in the British press revealed a truly sensational musical discovery - six Haydn piano sonatas 1)______________(find) in Germany. Apparently the long-lost sonatas 2 )_________ (discover) by a German music teacher in the home of an elderly lady. Strangely enough, the manuscripts, which 3) _________ (pronounce) genuine by several eminent musicologists, 4 )________ (not make) available in their original form, so no scientific tests could 5)________ (carry out) in order to verify their authenticity. The musical world 6 )________ (throw) into a state of great excitement by this news. Preparations 7)__________ (make) for a prestigious recording of the sonatas, and an authoritative article 8)________ (publish) in the BBC’s Music Magazine. Since then, however, a note of doubt has crept in, and experts now say that unless the originals 9)_____ (hand over) very soon, the manuscripts must 10)________ (regard) as a forgery, albeit a very clever one.

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