Let’s talk about the passive tense, an often disparaged and misunderstood verb tense in English.

The passive tense is a grammatical construction used in writing and speaking. It is a verb tense, but is also often called a “voice.”  When the passive tense is used the noun or noun phrase (which is the object in an active sentence) becomes the subject of a passive sentence. Here is an example for you to see:

Active sentence: Ms. Smith teaches the students.
Passive sentence: The students are taught by Ms. Smith.

As you can see in this example not only does the object of the sentence move, but the passive verb tense is formed by using the auxiliary verb ‘be’ (or sometimes ‘get’) and the past participle of the main verb.

Take a look at the following four sentences and see if you can decide which ones are passive sentences.
1.    Eli repaired his car.
2.    Every year the car is checked by Eli’s repairman.
3.    Many cars have been repaired by Eli over the years.
4.    The car is going to have been repaired by Eli before the road trip.

In these sentences, #1 is in the active voice and #2-4 are in the passive voice.

Now try this, see if you can turn this active sentence into a passive sentence.
Active: Mom makes dinner every night.
Passive: (See the end of this post for the answer.)

Lastly, let’s take a look at when you might want to use the passive voice instead of the active voice.

You should use the passive tense when:
A.    You want to emphasize the object of the sentence over the subject.
B.    The actor (or performer of the action) is unknown.
C.    The actor (or performer of the action) is common knowledge.
D.    The actor (or performer of the action) is unimportant or irrelevant.
E.    You want to be vague about who is responsible for the action.
F.    You are talking about a general truth. (Example: Rules are made to be broken.)
G.    You are writing a scientific paper or report, i.e. a research paper.

Here is a short video about when and why to use the passive tense. This is a video review of what is covered above, which would be great to watch to practice your listening comprehension and to reinforce what you just read.

http://international.ouc.bc.ca/chalkntalk/whypassive/

Although you shouldn’t use the passive tense too often, it is a good verb tense to know how to use well. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Answer from above.
Passive sentence: Dinner is made by mom every night.