Who Gets Blamed?
Grammar: Passive Voice
A Level 4 English lesson exploring environment.
What's in this lesson
A Level 4 (upper intermediate) ESL lesson on environment, practising passive voice. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Who Gets Blamed?
Here is a sentence: Carbon emissions were released into the atmosphere. And here is the same fact, told differently: Oil companies released carbon into the atmosphere. Same event. Very different feeling. The first sentence is in the passive voice — and the agent, the person or company doing the damage, has quietly disappeared. This is not an accident. It may have been the most powerful rhetorical trick of the last fifty years.
Vocabulary
- were released
- released
- may have been
- were made
- have been affected
- could have been
- is being committed
- are committing
- gets bogged down
- may have been underestimated
Grammar: Passive Voice
- Modal passive
- The damage may have been underestimated for years. — past possibility, uncertain
Discussion questions
- Imagine a law was passed but nobody was named in it — would it work?
- If you could rewrite one headline to change who looks guilty, which story would you choose?
- Would you trust a company more if it said 'we made a mistake' or 'mistakes were made'?
Who Gets Blamed?
Grammar: Passive Voice
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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