Passive Quiz‏‎

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Passive Quiz is a simple activity to help your students practice using the passive voice. It is very flexible and can be used with all ages and levels who are familiar with the passive voice.

There are a number of variations on the activity at the end of this article, plus it can be adapted and developed in many different ways to suit your class.


Overview

The general idea of Passive Quiz is to get your students answering quiz questions in the passive voice. To start this off, you can ask them the right kind of questions such as When was/were ... invented? so the answer needs to be passive.

For example:
Q: When was sliced bread invented?
A: It was invented in 1928.
Preparation

Prepare a list of inventions and dates, e.g.
matches - 1827
telescope - 1609
bicycle - 1818
sliced bread - 1928
bikini - 1946


NB a good list of inventions and dates can be found here.
Revising the Passive in class

Revise the grammar of the passive voice in class to remind the students. As an example use something like:

active
Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft in 1952.

passive
The hovercraft was invented in 1952 by Christopher Cockerell.

Go through several questions with them giving the students plenty of opportunity to create the passive form. And stress here that if they don't know who did something, they can leave out the inventor and just give the date:
The hovercraft was invented in 1952.

Likewise, if they know the inventor but not the year they can answer:
The hovercraft was invented by Christopher Cockerell.


Playing the Game

Once the class are confident in the use of the passive in this context, you can divide them into small teams and have them sit in different areas of the class.

The rules of the game are this:
You will ask a question and the first student with their hand up will answer IN THE PASSIVE VOICE.
If they get the year right within 10 years, they get 2 points for their team.
If they get the year exactly right, they get 5 points for their team.
If they get the inventor right, they get 2 points for their team
If they get the year or inventor wrong, they lose 1 point from their team. This is to encourage students to consider before they speak rather than throw up their hands willy nilly.
Each team must guess until the right answer is found!

Encourage them to discuss the answers amongst themselves before putting their hand up.
NB you can adjust or simplify these scoring rules depending on your class. The first time you play you may want to make them simpler.

Now simply ask the questions, keeping score on the board.


Example Question

T: When was sliced bread invented?

Team A: It was invented in 1850.

T: Sorry, far too early! Your team loses a point.

Team B: It was invented in 1950.

T: Sorry, a little bit late. Your team loses a point.

Team C: It was invented in 1925.

T: Very good! It was invented in 1928 so you win 2 points.


More Student Involvement

Of course, once the students have played the game once or twice it's much better to have them prepare the questions in teams and to ask the others.

If you have a CALL class, this is ideal as they can use the internet to research inventions. If not, you may be able to provide a simple list from which the students have to prepare questions or an encyclopaedia for each team to use in research.


Variations on a Theme
Simpler Version

You can simplify the game by using true/false questions:

Q: Sliced bread was invented in 1920.

A: No, it was invented before 1920 or No, it was invented after that.

This is useful with smaller classes and is better with 1-to-1 interaction between the teacher and students.
Multiple Choice Questions

If you want the class to write the answers, give them multiple choice questions:
Sliced Bread
a) 1728
b) 1828
b) 1928

And the students need to write:
Sliced bread was invented in 1928.

This works well with inventors which are often harder to guess than dates.
Hovercraft
a) Alender Graham Bell
b) Christopher Cockerell
b) Tim Berners Lee
The hovercraft was invented by Christopher Cockerell.
Flashcards

The game can also be played using flashcards; this will add a llittle more vocabulary practice for the students. You can prepare a stack of flashcards which you hand out to the class; they will need then to create the passive question from these.
More Passives

Once the students are familiar with the game, you can introduce more passive verbs and constructions, for example:
Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming.
The Parthenon was begun in 447 BCE and was finished in 432 BCE.
President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.
The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
Country Specific

You can introduce questions about a specific country such as your own. Suppose you are an American teacher then you could create questions to elicit these answers:
The Whitehouse was built between 1792 and 1800.
President Obama was inaugurated in 2009.

With these as a template, your students can create questions about their own country to ask the others in the class. This often works well with a multi-nationality class.