Lesson 11: The Passive Voice and Formal Style
Master the use of the passive voice and formal style in academic and professional contexts.
About this lesson
In this lesson, you will consolidate your understanding of the passive voice across a range of tenses and learn to use it deliberately to achieve a more formal tone. You will get to grips with impersonal constructions such as "It is believed/expected that…", hedging language, and an objective tone suited to reports, news writing, and official correspondence. You will practise transforming active sentences into passive ones and selecting appropriately formal phrasing. Finally, you will sharpen your listening and dictation skills using authentic formal-style content to improve both accuracy and comprehension.
40 minutes
What you'll learn
- Recognise and use the passive voice across key tenses
- Transform active sentences into formal passive constructions
- Use impersonal expressions to achieve a neutral and official tone
- Apply hedging language and measured claims in writing
- Write concise formal messages and summaries using an appropriate register
Lesson vocabulary
- allocate The budget was allocated for research and development.
- disclose All relevant documents must be disclosed to the public.
- comply Compliance with the regulations is strictly enforced.
- oversight The department is responsible for financial oversight.
- scrutiny The accounts were subjected to intense scrutiny.
- implement The new policy will be implemented next quarter.
- stakeholder Stakeholders were consulted before the final decision was made.
- guideline The guidelines must be followed by all departments.
- allegation The allegations have not yet been confirmed by officials.
- mitigate Measures were taken to mitigate the impact of the outage.
- inquiry An inquiry into the matter has been initiated.
- postpone The project was postponed due to unforeseen circumstances.
- accountability Greater accountability is being demanded by stakeholders.
- amendment The amendment to the law was approved by parliament.
- merger It has been announced that the merger will proceed.