Passive & Reported Speech

These two topics share one engine: they rearrange a sentence without changing its meaning. The passive is built from a single formula — be + past participle (V3) — and the tense lives inside the be part, never in the main verb: is cleaned, was cleaned, has been cleaned, is being cleaned, will be cleaned. To flip an active sentence, the old object becomes the new subject, and the old subject either vanishes or trails behind with by: The council repaired the bridge → The bridge was repaired (by the council).

Reported speech has its own single move. When the reporting verb is in the past (said, told, asked), everything it carries backshifts one step — present becomes past, will becomes would, can becomes could. Time and place words travel too: today → that day, here → there, now → then. Master these two rearrangements — the CCTV flip and the messenger’s one-step-back — and a huge slice of formal English suddenly clicks into place.

Two maps of one skill — a mind map of the whole system, then a flowchart that turns any direct sentence into reported speech.

Level 2 · The mechanics. Every passive is built from one formula: be + past participle (V3). The clever part is that the tense never touches the main verb — it lives entirely in the be. Change the time of the sentence and you change only be; the participle stays frozen.

We reach for the passive when the doer is unknown (My bike was stolen — we do not know by whom), obvious (The thief was arrested — by the police, naturally), or simply unimportant (Rice is grown in Bengal). It also buys tact, letting us report a problem without pointing fingers — A mistake was made — and it serves end-weight, parking long, heavy information at the end. When we do name the doer we use by; for the tool or instrument we use with: The form was signed by the officer with a blue pen. One bonus: a verb with two objects gives two passives — from They gave Meena a prize you can front either one: Meena was given a prize (the natural choice) or A prize was given to Meena.

Level 2 · Reporting. When the reporting verb is past (said, told, asked), the message backshifts one step into the past. This table is the beating heart of reported speech.

Words anchored to the moment of speaking travel too, because that moment has passed:

Two sentence types need extra care. Reported questions lose their inversion and their question mark and slide back to statement order. A wh- question keeps its wh-word — Where do you live? → He asked where I lived. A yes/no question borrows if or whether — Are you ready? → She asked if I was ready. Reported commands drop the imperative for told / asked + object + to-infinitive — Wait here! → She told us to wait there.

Level 3 · The expert edge. Three refinements separate the fluent from the merely correct. First, the reporting passive relays rumour impersonally: It is said that he lives abroad, or the tighter He is said to live abroad. Second, the get-passive is the everyday, spoken cousin of be, favouring sudden or unlucky events — My phone got stolen; they got married. Third, have something done means you arranged for someone else to do the work, not that you did it yourself: We had the boiler serviced; she is getting her hair cut.

Finally, the reporting verb itself often fixes the pattern that follows it. Admit and deny take an -ing form (He admitted taking it); promise and refuse take a to-infinitive (She refused to sign); suggest takes -ing or that…should; warn takes an object + to (They warned us not to go). And one gentle exception overrides backshift: a universal truth may keep the present tense — The teacher said that water boils at 100 degrees.

Each puzzle hands you a jumbled sentence — a passive to flip or a line to report. Drag the chips into the single order a fluent speaker would use; mind the be + V3 chain, backshift and the reported word order. A wrong try names the exact rule that slipped.