Question

Change the following sentence into passive voice:
The children were listening to the song carefully.
(a) The song was been listening by the children carefully.
(b) The song was being listened by the children carefully.
(c) The song was being listened to by the children carefully.
(d) None of the above

Answer 1

Hint: Read the given sentence and try to tell it to a third person in your head. You will get a fair idea of how the answer in passive voice should be. Now go through the options and look for the sentence which you framed in your head or the sentence closest to it. Keep in mind to form a grammatically sound sentence.

Complete answer:
There are two types of voice- Active voice is a grammatical voice in which the subject acts, whereas Passive voice is a grammatical voice in which the subject receives the action of the verb. The object is more emphasized in the passive voice.
Let’s look at the rules that we need to follow while changing an active voice to passive voice-
(i) The position of the subject and object are interchanged.
(ii) We use a ‘by’ with the subject to indicate who acted.
(iii) We use the corresponding tense form with the past participle form of the verb.
In the given question- The positions of the subject and the object should be interchanged and since we can see the use of past continuous tense, we need to use the passive form of past continuous tense.
Hence, the passive voice of the sentence should be- The song was being listened to by the children carefully.
Now, let’s examine the given options-
Option a- ‘The song was been listening by the children carefully’ is an incorrect option because the tense of the sentence is incorrect, we need to use the 3rd form of the verb.
Option b- ‘The song was being listened to by the children carefully’ is an incorrect option because ‘to’ is missing.
Option c- ‘The song was being listened to by the children carefully’ is the correct option because it is the passive form of the given sentence. The correct answer is Option ‘c’.

Note: Keep in mind that we always use the third form or the past participle form in the passive voice. Also, it is important to use the appropriate corresponding tense forms.