Question

Somebody is following us.
Rewrite the sentence beginning from ‘We…’:
a. We are followed (by somebody).
b. We were followed (by somebody).
c. We are being followed (by someone).
d. We were being followed (by someone).

Answer 1

Hint: The question is asking us to essentially reverse the order of the parts of speech. This means that we need to convert the sentence from active voice to passive voice. In active voice, the subject acts, however, in the passive voice, the subject is placed at the end of the sentence. It is not outrightly visible, nor is it a command.

Complete answer: Let us first understand what active and passive voices are. Active voice means that the given sentence has a subject that performs its verb. In short, this means that the subject is visible or is present in the sentence. For example, in the given question, the sentence ‘Somebody is following us’, the subject is ‘somebody’, and the object is ‘us’. Passive voice means that a subject is in place of an object, i.e. a recipient of a verb’s
action. This means that the subject is not outrightly seen. It is usually there but is
considered invisible. At the end of a passive voice sentence, to make the subject seen,
you just add ‘by someone’. This becomes the default subject.

To convert the active voice into passive voice, all you need to do is change the
order of the parts of speech. So, the ‘subject + verb + object’ in active voice changes to
‘object + verb + (subject)’ in the passive voice. The tense of the verb does not change.
Now, we know what we are looking for. Let’s look at the given options:
a. We are followed (by somebody). - In this sentence, the order has been reversed, but the verb has a different tense, which is wrong. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
b. We were followed (by somebody). - In this sentence, the order has been reversed, but the verb has a different tense, which is wrong. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
c. We are being followed (by someone). - In this sentence, the order has been reversed and the verb has the same tense. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.
d. We were being followed (by someone). In this sentence, the order has been reversed, but the verb has a different tense, which is wrong. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.

Note: The sentences belonging to the following tenses can’t be converted to Passive voice : (i) Present perfect continuous tense, (ii) Past perfect continuous tense, (iii) Future perfect continuous tense and (iv) Future continuous tense.