Editing Active Voice
Prior Knowledge
Before beginning the lesson students will have already established an account for the COCA corpus, and will have basic experience using the features. In addition students should be able to identify auxiliary be verbs (be, is, are, was, were, being, been).
Reading
(2012, Summer) Reducing “to be” Verbs in Writing. Blinn College-Bryan Writing Center. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.blinn.edu/brazos/humanities/writingcenter/Handouts/Reducing%20the%20to%20BE %20verb.pdf.
(2012). Avoiding the Passive Voice. Union College Writing Center. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.union.edu/Resources/Academic/writing/Help/passive.php
TLWBT
Activity Development
Students will have already registered to the COCA website and have clearance to conduct the minimum amount of searches per day, allowing for completion of the activity without having to register in the middle of the activity. As students will have developed prior knowledge through the homework reading in locating and identifying passive voice through the use of to be verbs, the activity will be taught primarily in an ope lab setting with the guidance of a handout provided.
To start the class the students should be primed in discussion about the homework readings. Discussion should redefine the terms active voice and passive voice
active voice: the voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is performing the action or causing the happening denoted by the verb; "`The boy threw the ball' uses the active voice"1
passive voice: the voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb; "`The ball was thrown by the boy' uses the passive voice"; "`The ball was thrown' is an abbreviated passive”
In class examples should be provided and written on the board. Students should take the time as a class to edit from passive to active voice briefly before starting the activity. Once a basic proficiency of the practice has been completed as a class students should receive the handout and work through the introductory examples before starting to search for their own examples on the COCA website.
The handout has a brief summary of the readings as to the definition of passive voice and then gives examples of editing from passive to active. It also includes an example of a register that is not transformable, in that it would change the meaning of the sentence. As students work through the beginning of the activity, there are a list of sentences that are to be transformed from passive voice to active voice. These registers are a basic be verb forms that students should already be able to identify (be, is, are, was, were, being, been). Upon completion of the editing of the provided sentences, students are to use COCA and find one example of passive voice for each of the be verbs and make the appropriate edit to ensure that the sentence maintains the same meaning. In addition to the passive to active voice, students also need to find examples of a sentence in which the be verb cannot be edited from the sentence.
Reflective Notes:
This activity should get students thinking about writing in the active voice. It was included before the next activity to give students the skill of editing for active voice. In some ways this type of stylistic writing is subjective to the reader and writer, but the article that is used in the next activity talks about the readers ability to comprehend text better when reading a text that has an active voice. The be verb register typically indicates when passive voice is used. Be and is are the two easiest verb registers to edit and remove from a paper, however adding the other forms of the verb provide a more challenging approach to trying to edit for passive voice. The worksheet gives a good example in how to edit for active voice and sentences to practice this skill.
Using COCA was a good idea, however using other corpora may have made searching for passive voice a little easier. MICASE would have been a good corpus to use or reference since it only has spoken registers. Using student, student interactions probably would have provided quick results when looking for passive voice, because of the informality of those interactions. On the other hand, using COCA allowed for freedom to search any type of text. In completing the student example, searching specific text types made it a little easier and there was no intention to make the activity restrictive. MICASE could have been used as well, however the same perimeters would have been applied and allowed students to have freedom to search any sort of spoken interaction.
1 Definition's provided by http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu
Before beginning the lesson students will have already established an account for the COCA corpus, and will have basic experience using the features. In addition students should be able to identify auxiliary be verbs (be, is, are, was, were, being, been).
Reading
(2012, Summer) Reducing “to be” Verbs in Writing. Blinn College-Bryan Writing Center. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.blinn.edu/brazos/humanities/writingcenter/Handouts/Reducing%20the%20to%20BE %20verb.pdf.
(2012). Avoiding the Passive Voice. Union College Writing Center. Retrieved November 20, 2013, from http://www.union.edu/Resources/Academic/writing/Help/passive.php
TLWBT
- Take prior knowledge of verb identification and search verb tenses in COCA
- Identify uses of passive voice (in this case be verbs).
- Distinguish difference sentences that can an cannot have a transformed sentence structure.
-
- “not every transformed structure may be de-transformed without destroying meaning and inhibiting the comprehension of how the[se] sentences relate serially to one another” (Evans, 279).
- “not every transformed structure may be de-transformed without destroying meaning and inhibiting the comprehension of how the[se] sentences relate serially to one another” (Evans, 279).
- Locate and edit passive voice registers in COCA.
- Locate transformed sentences that cannot be de-transformed.
- Have fun!
- Access to COCA website (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ )
- Use of individual computers.
- Worksheet on Stylistic Writing Using the Active Voice
Activity Development
Students will have already registered to the COCA website and have clearance to conduct the minimum amount of searches per day, allowing for completion of the activity without having to register in the middle of the activity. As students will have developed prior knowledge through the homework reading in locating and identifying passive voice through the use of to be verbs, the activity will be taught primarily in an ope lab setting with the guidance of a handout provided.
To start the class the students should be primed in discussion about the homework readings. Discussion should redefine the terms active voice and passive voice
active voice: the voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is performing the action or causing the happening denoted by the verb; "`The boy threw the ball' uses the active voice"1
passive voice: the voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb; "`The ball was thrown by the boy' uses the passive voice"; "`The ball was thrown' is an abbreviated passive”
In class examples should be provided and written on the board. Students should take the time as a class to edit from passive to active voice briefly before starting the activity. Once a basic proficiency of the practice has been completed as a class students should receive the handout and work through the introductory examples before starting to search for their own examples on the COCA website.
The handout has a brief summary of the readings as to the definition of passive voice and then gives examples of editing from passive to active. It also includes an example of a register that is not transformable, in that it would change the meaning of the sentence. As students work through the beginning of the activity, there are a list of sentences that are to be transformed from passive voice to active voice. These registers are a basic be verb forms that students should already be able to identify (be, is, are, was, were, being, been). Upon completion of the editing of the provided sentences, students are to use COCA and find one example of passive voice for each of the be verbs and make the appropriate edit to ensure that the sentence maintains the same meaning. In addition to the passive to active voice, students also need to find examples of a sentence in which the be verb cannot be edited from the sentence.
Reflective Notes:
This activity should get students thinking about writing in the active voice. It was included before the next activity to give students the skill of editing for active voice. In some ways this type of stylistic writing is subjective to the reader and writer, but the article that is used in the next activity talks about the readers ability to comprehend text better when reading a text that has an active voice. The be verb register typically indicates when passive voice is used. Be and is are the two easiest verb registers to edit and remove from a paper, however adding the other forms of the verb provide a more challenging approach to trying to edit for passive voice. The worksheet gives a good example in how to edit for active voice and sentences to practice this skill.
Using COCA was a good idea, however using other corpora may have made searching for passive voice a little easier. MICASE would have been a good corpus to use or reference since it only has spoken registers. Using student, student interactions probably would have provided quick results when looking for passive voice, because of the informality of those interactions. On the other hand, using COCA allowed for freedom to search any type of text. In completing the student example, searching specific text types made it a little easier and there was no intention to make the activity restrictive. MICASE could have been used as well, however the same perimeters would have been applied and allowed students to have freedom to search any sort of spoken interaction.
1 Definition's provided by http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu