Serendipity

Unit 10, Activity 2

Index Activity 3

Grammar Drill - Passive Form of Modals

Passive modals are common in report writing. They are used to give recommendations.

A quick recap:

A modal verb is a ‘helping’ or ‘auxiliary’ verb such as should, must, might or could.

A passive sentence is where we construct the sentence beginning with the object instead of the subject of the action:

Active: John threw the ball.
Passive: The ball was thrown.

We use passive voice in formal reports where we avoid using ‘I’ or ‘we’:

Active: We should double the marketing budget.
Passive: The marketing budget should be doubled.

Note that a passive modal consists of three parts: the modal verb/phrase + BE + Past participle

Example: The results must be confirmed.