A selection of English ESL active vs passive voice video quizzes

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

I set this video up to practice passive vs active voice by means of 13 multiple choice questions. In some of the questions I picked verbs whose active form already implies sort of a passive meaning, e.g. "accumulate", "surge", "decline", and test whether students can decide between the passive and the active voice. In other questions I gapped passive voice constructs, and again check if students can guess the right form.


I also included some advanced passive constructs, e.g. passive ellipsis: "When exposed to sugar ..." (=when it is exposed to ...), and "is to blame" (=has to be blamed).

Because hearing the well-formed sentences is a huge help for students, I decided to make the task more difficult by mischievously letting the video play on after each gapped sentence to wipe out their hearing memories a bit. :)

I think the biggest merit of such a video-based grammar quiz is to prompt students to pay attention to and notice certain grammar structures, which they may otherwise ignore when simply 'consuming' the content of a video.

TedEd: What Causes Cavities? (Passive vs Active Voice Practice)

I created this video quiz by means of the Autoquiz function of the quiz creator ("Create a quiz in 1 click"), which uses the human-created subtitles of the video to generate a quiz in the topic of your choice. I chose the topic of "Passive - All tenses", and manually added some active voice questions (from the subtitle box) alongside the machine-generated passive ones. I've also inserted the infinitives in brackets by hand.

The objective of the lesson is to train students in the use of passive in simple tenses in the present and past, with one question involving a passive infinitive ("to be covered"). To make the task more challenging, I've added some active voice verbs that have an inherently passive meaning (to "face", "cover", "allow", "equal", "measure", "amount to"), so that the task does not become a mindless grammar drill. I've also delayed popping up each of the eleven questions with a few seconds to let students' auditory memory fade and make them rely on their knowledge of grammar, rather than their ears.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Passive vs Active Voice Practice

I created this video quiz by means of the Autoquiz function of the quiz creator ("Create a quiz in 1 click"), which uses the human-created subtitles of the video to generate a quiz in the topic of your choice. I chose the topic of 'Passive in simple tenses (present, past, future)' and manually added some active voice questions alongside the machine-generated passive ones using the subtitle box in the editor. I've also inserted the infinitives in brackets by hand.

The objective of the lesson is to train students in the use of passive in simple tenses in the present and past, with some questions involving the passive infinitive ("to be done") and modal passive structures ("could be done"). 

I've delayed popping up each of the fifteen questions with a few seconds to let students' auditory memory fade and make them rely on their knowledge of grammar, rather than their ears.

I made a related video quiz containing eight open-ended, deep listening comprehension questions. that you can assign to your students as follow-up or homework:

https://en.islcollective.com/video-lessons/automation-and-ai-are-destroying-jobs-not-work-deep-listenin

Automation and AI Are Destroying Jobs, Not Work - Passive vs Active Voice

This video quiz offers practice with some more advanced grammar points concerning the passive voice, e.g. "to be to + V1" structure, "if it weren't for", prepositions used in passive sentences, etc. To add even more cognitive load to the task, I've also included some phrases that are in active voice but have a passive meaning, e.g. have a lot to do with something = be connected to something.

Ticks Spreading Lyme Disease (Passive-Active Voice Practice)

This video quiz was created using the Autoquiz function of the quiz creator, which uses the subtitles of the video to generate a quiz in the topic of your choice. I chose the topic of "Passive in simple tenses", and added some active voice questions alongside the machine-generated ones. I've also manually included the infinitives in brackets.

The objective of the lesson is to train students in the use of passive in simple tenses (present, past, future). To make the task challenging, I've included active sentences, too so that the task does not become a simple grammar drill. I've also delayed popping up the questions a bit, so that the audio wanes a bit and there's a better chance that they will need to rely on their knowledge of grammar and not simply write down what they have just heard.

TedEd: Will the ocean ever run out of fish? - Passive vs Active Voice

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Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

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5 English ESL video lessons: active vs passive voice