Grammar: grading your own voice-and-narration script
You have just finished the 20-mark Grammar section of your own practice paper and no answer key is available yet, so you must judge your script against the rules you have been taught. The eight transformation items carried one mark each. Your answers were: (i) 'They gave him a book' → 'He was given a book.' (ii) 'Open the door' → 'The door should be opened.' (iii) 'Who taught you English?' → 'By whom were you taught English?' (iv) 'He said, "I am going to Delhi tomorrow"' → 'He said that he was going to Delhi the next day.' (v) 'The teacher said, "The sun rises in the east"' → 'The teacher said that the sun rose in the east.' (vi) 'She said to me, "Please help me"' → 'She requested me to help her.' (vii) 'Someone has broken the window' → 'The window has been broken.' (viii) 'If I were a bird, I would fly' → 'If I had been a bird, I would have flown.' Your friend insists that all eight deserve full marks because 'the meaning comes out the same'. You have one evening to decide what to correct before the test is repeated.
1. Decide item by item which answers you would keep at full marks and which you would rewrite, giving the grammatical reason for each decision in one line.
Read the worked answer
Keep: (i), (iii), (iv), (vi), (vii). Rewrite: (ii), (v), (viii).
- (i) 'Give' takes two objects, so either object can become the subject of a passive. 'He was given a book' is standard written English.
- (iii) 'By whom were you taught English?' is a correctly fronted passive question; nothing is lost.
- (iv) The reporting verb is past, so the present continuous shifts to past continuous and 'tomorrow' becomes 'the next day'. Both shifts are done.
- (vi) A polite imperative is reported with 'requested + object + to + verb'. Correct.
- (vii) The agent is unknown, so it is dropped; the present perfect survives as 'has been broken'.
- (ii) Wrong force, not wrong tense: 'should be opened' turns a command into advice. The passive of an imperative keeps the command: 'Let the door be opened.'
- (v) Wrong rule: a universal truth keeps the present tense even after a past reporting verb. It must stay 'rises'.
- (viii) Wrong rule applied: this is not reported speech at all, and turning a second conditional into a third conditional changes the meaning from an unreal present to an unreal past.
The friend's test ('the meaning comes out the same') fails on (ii), (v) and (viii) precisely because the meaning does change.
2. Rewrite the three answers you flagged and state, in one sentence each, the rule the rewrite follows.
Read the worked answer
- (ii) Let the door be opened. Rule: an imperative has no subject, so its passive is built with 'let' + object + 'be' + past participle, and the command force must survive the transformation.
- (v) The teacher said that the sun rises in the east. Rule: universal truths, habitual facts and proverbs are not backshifted, because they were not true only at the moment of speaking.
- (viii) If I were a bird, I would fly. Rule: backshift belongs to reporting verbs, not to conditional sentences; the internal grammar of a type-2 conditional stays type-2.
Notice the pattern behind the three errors: each one applies a rule in a place where the rule does not operate. That is the commonest way candidates lose grammar marks - not by not knowing the rule, but by over-applying it.
3. Item (i) has two correct passives. Explain how you would choose between them in the examination hall, and what the choice actually tests.
Read the worked answer
Both 'He was given a book' and 'A book was given to him' are grammatically correct, so the choice cannot be settled by grammar alone.
- Keep the person as subject when the person is the known or continuing topic - here the sentence is already about 'him', so 'He was given a book' reads as a continuation.
- Put the thing first when the book is the new or emphasised information, or when the instruction forces it ('Begin with A book').
- Watch the verb: with 'give', 'offer', 'send', 'show', 'teach' both patterns work; with verbs like 'explain', 'announce', 'suggest' the thing must be the subject ('The plan was explained to us', not 'We were explained the plan').
So the choice tests whether you understand information focus and verb sub-classes, not whether you can chant a passive formula. In the exam, if no starting word is prescribed, prefer the version that keeps the original emphasis and cannot be called ambiguous - here, 'He was given a book.'