English Language Arts · 9th Grade · Grammar, Style, and the Power of Language · Weeks 28-36

Passive Voice for Objectivity

Understanding when to intentionally use the passive voice for objectivity, formality, or to de-emphasize the actor.

• Common Core State Standards
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.4

About This Topic

Passive voice is taught primarily as something to avoid, but professional writers use it deliberately and purposefully in specific contexts. Scientific writing uses passive constructions to foreground the procedure rather than the researcher ('The solution was heated to 90 degrees'). Journalism uses passive voice when the actor is unknown or irrelevant ('Three people were arrested'). Legal and bureaucratic writing often uses passive to distribute or obscure responsibility. Understanding these contexts makes students more sophisticated readers and more intentional writers.

In US 9th grade ELA, this topic complements the active voice unit by building the 'choose deliberately' mindset that CCSS L.9-10.3 requires. Students who learn only 'active is good, passive is bad' are underprepared for the variety of writing contexts they will encounter in high school and beyond.

Active learning works well here because the cases where passive voice is clearly the right choice are easy to surface through comparison and analysis. When students examine authentic professional texts from different genres side by side, the pattern becomes visible without requiring a lecture to establish it.

Key Questions

1. When might a scientist or journalist intentionally use the passive voice?
2. How does the passive voice allow a writer to hide the 'doer' of an action?
3. Compare the effects of active and passive voice in different contexts (e.g., news report vs. personal essay).

Learning Objectives

• Analyze provided professional texts to identify instances where passive voice is used intentionally for objectivity or to de-emphasize the actor.
• Compare and contrast the stylistic and rhetorical effects of active versus passive voice in specific contexts, such as scientific reports and news articles.
• Explain the grammatical structure of the passive voice and how it differs from the active voice.
• Evaluate the appropriateness of using passive voice in a given writing scenario, justifying the choice based on audience and purpose.

Before You Start

Identifying Subjects, Verbs, and Objects

Why: Students must be able to identify the core components of a sentence to understand how voice affects their relationship.

Basic Sentence Structure and Clauses

Why: Understanding how sentences are constructed is foundational to recognizing and manipulating grammatical voice.

Key Vocabulary

passive voice	A grammatical construction where the subject of the sentence receives the action, rather than performing it. The structure typically involves a form of 'to be' and the past participle of the main verb.
active voice	A grammatical construction where the subject of the sentence performs the action. This is the more common voice, with the subject directly acting upon the object.
actor	In grammar, the person or thing performing the action of the verb. In passive voice, the actor is often omitted or placed in a prepositional phrase.
objectivity	A quality of writing that presents facts and information without personal bias or emotion, focusing on observable phenomena.
de-emphasize	To reduce the importance or prominence of a particular element within a sentence or text.

Watch Out for These Misconceptions

Common Misconception

Passive voice is always a mistake that weakens writing.

What to Teach Instead

Passive voice is a stylistic choice that serves specific rhetorical purposes in specific contexts. The error is using it unconsciously or without purpose, not using it at all. When students analyze published scientific and journalistic texts, they find that passive constructions appear consistently for deliberate reasons, which reframes the rule as a judgment call rather than a prohibition.

Common Misconception

Using passive voice to hide the 'doer' is always dishonest or evasive.

What to Teach Instead

There are legitimate reasons to de-emphasize the actor: scientific objectivity, unknown actors, procedural focus. There are also ethically questionable reasons, like obscuring corporate or political responsibility. Teaching students to evaluate whether a specific passive construction is purposeful or evasive builds critical reading skills that go beyond grammar.

Active Learning Ideas

Think-Pair-Share: Passive by Choice

Give students three passive-voice sentences from three different genres (a science report, a news article, a legal document). Students individually identify why the passive might be the right choice in each context, then compare reasoning with a partner. The class builds a list of contexts where passive voice serves a purpose.

20 min·Pairs

Jigsaw: Genre Experts

Assign each group a genre (science writing, journalism, legal writing, personal essay). Groups read two short excerpts and identify all passive constructions, then hypothesize why the passive serves this genre. Groups report findings to the full class, building a shared genre-voice reference chart.

40 min·Small Groups

Writing Workshop: Voice in Context

Students write the same event in two genres, once as a news report and once as a personal essay. They must include at least one intentional passive construction in the news report and explain in an annotation why they chose it. Partners evaluate whether the passive choice was effective.

35 min·Individual

Real-World Connections

• In scientific research papers published by journals like Nature or Science, passive voice is frequently used to describe experimental procedures. For example, 'The samples were analyzed using mass spectrometry' focuses on the method, not the specific researcher who performed the analysis.
• News reports often employ passive voice when the perpetrator of an action is unknown or less important than the action itself. A headline might read, 'A valuable artifact was stolen from the museum last night,' shifting focus from the thief to the crime.

Assessment Ideas

Exit Ticket

Provide students with two short paragraphs on the same topic, one primarily in active voice and the other in passive voice. Ask students to identify which paragraph uses passive voice intentionally and explain why, referencing objectivity or de-emphasizing the actor.

Quick Check

Present students with sentences and ask them to identify whether they are in active or passive voice. Then, ask them to rewrite a few passive sentences into active voice, and vice versa, explaining the change in emphasis or clarity for each.

Peer Assessment

Students bring in a short piece of their own writing or a professional text. In pairs, they identify examples of passive voice, discuss whether its use is effective for the context, and suggest alternatives or confirm its appropriateness.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should a writer intentionally use passive voice?

Intentional passive voice is appropriate when the actor is unknown ('A wallet was found on the steps'), when the actor is less important than the action ('The experiment was repeated three times'), or when formal register demands it. Scientific writing, legal documents, and some journalism routinely use passive constructions for these reasons, and students should recognize these as deliberate choices.

How does passive voice allow a writer to hide the doer of an action?

By placing the action's recipient as the grammatical subject, passive voice allows the actor to be omitted entirely or relegated to a prepositional phrase. 'Mistakes were made' never names who made them. This can reflect genuine uncertainty, professional convention, or deliberate evasion, students should evaluate which is operating in any specific text.

How does active learning help students understand when to use passive voice?

Students grasp the distinction between purposeful and careless passive voice most quickly through genre-comparison activities rather than rules. When small groups examine authentic texts from science, journalism, and personal writing side by side and identify passive constructions in context, the pattern of when and why writers choose passive emerges organically from the evidence.

How do active and passive voice differ in news reports versus personal essays?

News reports use passive when the actor is unknown, unimportant, or when objectivity requires foregrounding the event over the individual. Personal essays rarely use passive because agency and personal responsibility are central to the genre. Comparing passages from both genres is one of the most efficient ways to show students that voice choice is genre-driven, not arbitrary.