2020-02-26
6 分钟Hi there.
This is Harry, and welcome to the podcast where I try to help you understand your use of English through written Grammar, listening, use of English, and most importantly, conversational English to help you to speak and converse with people, people, native speakers or other people in a more effective way.
Okay, so what do I have for you now?
Well, I have a sentence and it's a fairly recent article about this terrible problem with these viruses that have been spreading from China into other asian areas, but limited amount of problems in Europe.
However, a recent report has indicated that a third patient in the UK is now suffering from the virus.
So I'll read the sentence for you.
This is quite a long one.
The third UK patient is understood to be a middle aged man who was isolated at home, tested positive, and was taken to a hospital in London where he's been treated at a specialist infectious diseases unit.
Okay, let me give you that again.
The third UK patient is understood to be a middle aged man who was isolated at home, tested positive and was taken to a hospital in London where he has been treated at a specialist infectious diseases unit.
Specialist infectious diseases unit.
It's quite a mouthful.
Okay, so this is a sad case, of course, but it's a really, really good example of the passive form of the verbs.
And all of the verbs here are in the passive form.
So we've got the third UK patient is understood passive to be a middle aged man who was isolated at home, was isolated at home, passive, tested positive and was taken to a hospital in London, was taken passive where he is being treated, passive at a specialist infectious diseases unit.
So here we've got lots of examples of the passive form of the verbs and we have is understood.
So here we have the present simple passive, was isolated past simple passive, was taken past perfect passive where he is being treated, present continuous passive.
Okay, so good examples of how we use the passive verbs, and it's exactly the same as active.
We use the same tenses, present simple, past simple, whatever it might be.
But the most important aspect is we use that verb to be.