TP #6: The 5 Paragraph Essay and Passive/Active Voice

September 12, 2013

            My conversation partner, Mehmas, has saved my CIES tutoring. My other tutees are now attending the TOEFL class that is taught weekly at 3 pm Thursday. Mehmas would take the IELTS, so he doesn’t attend. My goal is to find another of his friends to join us so it is more class-like, but for now I’m happy to have one tutee at short notice.

            I asked Mehmas what he wanted to focus on, and he told me his writing is his weakest area. He showed me an article on American bullfrog tadpoles that he had to outline in his composition class. I felt for him because I had a hard time finding a thesis statement, for example! Perhaps some articles don’t function like a five paragraph essay. Still, it’s confusing. I want to bring in a more traditional essay next week to help build his confidence and skills. We discussed indenting to show a new paragraph, as well.

            Then, I wanted to discuss the passive voice. When Mehmas invited me over for dinner, we spoke of his name. “Mehmas is not common in Kuwait, but in Saudi Arabia many people is names Mehmas,” he told me.

            “Are named,” I had corrected. He understood why we needed to say are, but not the d at the end of named.

            “Is not past tense!” he told me. “Why is it named?”

            “I will…tell you next week!” I promised. In the meantime, I thought about it and realized that sentence is passive. If it was in active voice, he would have said, “Many people name their children Mehmas in Saudi Arabia.”

            I brought up the passive tense in tutoring, and we spent time switching from passive to active voice. First, I reminded Mehmas about how every verb has three forms: present, past, and past participle. I knew he was familiar with this concept because he had shown me his picture dictionary from Foundations with the columns of irregular verbs. We used sentences like, “Luis was taken home,” and “The water was spilled.” I mentioned that the passive voice is good for avoiding who did the action. If we know who did it, though, we can then switch to active: “Rose took Luis home,” and “The boy spilled the water.” He seemed to catch on, but of course we’ll need to practice this week, too. I told him it’s common to see passive voice in newspapers, so we’ll need to find some!