Unit 4
Grammar Practice Exercise

In the reading passage, "Who are the Goodwill Ambassadors?", several sentences or phrases have passive constructions:

"So many people were affected"/ "Someone was beaten"/ "...so many people could be displaced"

We write sentences in the passive when telling the action is more important than telling who performed the action.

The diagram below shows how a passive construction is formed.
Note that the agent column is sometimes omitted because it is already understood:

Note that the tense of the verb to be indicates the tense of the sentence.The mood of the verb to be can be modified by using a modal such as could or should. 

Further Explanation of Grammar

Grammar exercise with Passives