Passive Voice ESL Games, Activities and Worksheets

In this passive voice running dictation activity, students race to dictate a story and then use it to complete and order sentences in the past simple passive or past perfect passive. One student is the reader and the other is the writer. The reader runs to Text A on the wall outside the classroom, reads the first part of the story, tries to remember as much as they can, runs back and dictates the text to their partner who writes it down. This continues until Text A has been fully dictated. Students then swap roles for Text B and the process is repeated. When the story has been completed, students read it with their partner and complete sentences on their worksheet with verbs in the past simple passive or past perfect passive. After that, students put the sentences in the correct order. The first pair of students to complete both exercises correctly wins.

In this productive shoe-themed passive voice worksheet, students practice the affirmative, negative and interrogative forms of the present, past and future simple passive. Students start by putting words in order to make present simple passive sentences, writing the verb in the correct passive voice form. Next, students order words to make past simple passive sentences. Students then put words in the correct order to make negative present simple or past simple passive sentences. After that, students choose one word or phrase from each column and make future simple passive sentences. Students then write passive questions for a set of answers. Finally, students make their own sentences using the passive voice.

In this free passive voice game, students practice making 'Name three' questions in the past and present passive. In groups, students take turns picking up a card and making a 'Name three' question by completing the gap with the past or present passive form of the verb in brackets. The student then reads the question to the group, e.g. 'Name three books that were made into films.' The group members then race to answer by naming three things belonging to the category. The first student to do this successfully keeps the card. The student with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

In this passive voice Find Someone Who activity, students ask and answer questions in the present perfect passive and past simple passive. In pairs, students prepare a yes/no question for each passive statement on their worksheet, e.g. 'Were you woken up by an alarm clock today?' Students then stand up and ask their questions to other students in the class. When a classmate answers 'yes' to a question, the student writes that person's name at the beginning of the sentence and asks a follow-up question to find out more information, e.g. 'What time were you woken up?', noting down the answer. Afterwards, students report their findings to the class using the present perfect and past simple passive, e.g. 'Paul was woken up by an alarm clock today. He was woken up at 7 o'clock.'

In these two engaging passive voice games, students identify past and present passive sentences about facts and inventions. To begin, groups race to identify past and present passive sentences about facts and inventions by correctly matching two parts of a sentence together. The first group to match all the sentence halves correctly wins. After the answers have been checked, students spread out the sentence beginnings and endings face-down in two sets. Students then take turns turning over one card from each set. If the two cards match to make a sentence about a fact or invention, the student reads the passive sentence aloud, keeps the two cards, and has another turn. If the two cards don't match, the student tries to make a grammatically correct passive statement with the beginning of the sentence, e.g. 'The population of the Earth is thought to enjoy eating chocolate.' The sentences do not have to be factually accurate. The student then turns the two cards back over, and it's the next person's turn to play. The student with the most cards at the end of the game wins.