Grammar
Essential for process diagrams, useful in Task 2, easy to overuse. With an error correction exercise.
The passive voice in IELTS is the structure Academic Task 1 process diagrams are built on, and it is one of the clearest ways to produce the impersonal tone Task 2 expects. It is also the structure candidates overuse once they discover it.
The form is simple: a form of be plus the past participle. The judgement is knowing when the action matters more than the person doing it, which is the only reason the passive exists.
The rules
Six points: the form, the uses, and the traps.
Be in the right tense, plus the past participle: is collected, was collected, has been collected, will be collected. The tense is carried entirely by be.
The bottles are washed and sterilised. Nobody needs to know who washes them, and naming an invented worker would be worse writing, not better.
These are written in the present simple passive from beginning to end. It is the single most predictable grammar requirement anywhere in the writing test.
It is widely believed that and this policy has been criticised let you present a view without claiming it as your own, which is exactly the register Task 2 rewards.
Only verbs that take an object can be made passive. The accident was happened and the population was risen are impossible, because nothing happens to anything. Watch happen, occur, rise, fall, arrive and consist of.
Add by and the agent only when the agent is genuinely informative: the scheme was funded by central government. Otherwise leave it out, which is the usual case.
Method
Six ways this earns marks under Grammatical Range and Accuracy.
Process diagrams recycle a small set: collected, heated, cooled, filtered, transported, packaged, stored. Twenty forms cover almost every diagram the test uses.
A paragraph of nothing but passives becomes monotonous. Break it with at this stage, once this is complete, the next step involves.
A passive used where the active is natural makes writing heavier, not more formal. Formality comes from word choice, not from removing the subject.
Dropping be gives the water filtered, which reads as an active verb and changes the meaning entirely. This is the commonest slip in a diagram description.
It has been argued that lets you introduce a position you are about to disagree with, which is a difficult thing to do gracefully in the active.
Ask whether the verb can take an object. If it cannot, no passive is possible, however natural the sentence sounds in your head.
Practice
Each sentence contains one error. Choose the correction.
Read the whole sentence before you choose. Every option below is a real form of English, so the question is not which word exists but which one this sentence needs.
This is how examiners see your writing: not as rules broken, but as sentences that do or do not work.
1Correct the error: The accident was happened at around six in the evening.
Happened. Happen takes no object, so it has no passive form at all. The same applies to occur, rise, fall and arrive.
2Correct the error: In the second stage, the mixture heated to 200 degrees.
Is heated. The auxiliary has been dropped. Without is, the sentence reads as an active verb and says the mixture heated something else.
3Correct the error: The population of the city was risen steadily over the period.
Rose. Rise is intransitive and cannot be passive. Raise is the transitive verb, so prices were raised is possible but the population was risen is not.
4Correct the error: The report was wrote by an independent committee.
Written. The passive needs the past participle, not the past simple. Irregular verbs are where this shows: wrote is past simple, written is the participle.
5Correct the error: The building is consisted of four separate sections.
Consists of. Consist of is never passive and never continuous. It is a fixed active pattern, and the passive version appears in a great many scripts.
6Correct the error: Once the glass has collected, it is sorted by colour.
Has been collected. The glass does not collect anything; it is collected. In the present perfect the passive needs has been plus the participle.
That is normal, and it is the whole problem with grammar study. Recognising an error in a sentence someone has told you contains one is far easier than finding it in your own essay, where every sentence looks correct because you wrote it.
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Choosing the right option from four is not the same as producing the structure accurately under time in an essay.
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In process diagrams throughout, and in Task 2 where the person doing the action is unknown or unimportant. Elsewhere the active is usually clearer.
Only where it is natural. A passive forced onto a sentence that wants the active reads as heavy rather than formal, and examiners notice the difference.
Any verb with no object, including happen, occur, rise, fall, arrive, exist and consist of. These produce impossible sentences rather than awkward ones.
Only when the agent adds information. In most process descriptions it does not, so leaving it out is the better choice.
The present simple passive, from the first stage to the last, unless the diagram is explicitly historical.
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