VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THỊ THUẬN COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF THE ENGLISH PASSIVE MADE BY THE GRADE 10 NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT TRAN PHU SPECIALISED HIGH SCHOOL, HAIPHONG NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP Ở THỂ BỊ ĐỘNG CỦA HỌC SINH KHÔNG CHUYÊN KHỐI 10 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN TRẦN PHÚ, HẢI PHÒNG M.A MINOR THESIS Major: Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THỊ THUẬN COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF THE ENGLISH PASSIVE MADE BY THE GRADE 10 NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT TRAN PHU SPECIALISED HIGH SCHOOL, HAIPHONG NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP Ở THỂ BỊ ĐỘNG CỦA HỌC SINH KHÔNG CHUYÊN KHỐI 10 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN TRẦN PHÚ, HẢI PHÒNG M.A MINOR THESIS Major: Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: NGUN HUN MINH, M.A HANOI - 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents Abbreviations Lists of tables and charts PART I - INTRODUCTION I Rationale of the study II Objectives of the study III Scope of the study IV Methods of the study V Organization of the study PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW An overview of voice in English 1.1 Voice 1.2 Active and Passive Voice 10 1.3 English passive voice 12 1.4 English passive in comparison with Vietnamese passive 26 Error and error analysis 28 2.1 Definition of error 28 2.2 Error analysis 29 2.3 Causes of errors 30 CHAPTER II – METHODOLOGY 33 Subject of the study 33 Setting 33 Research tools 34 Data collection procedures 36 i CHAPTER III – DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION 37 1.Written test 37 2.1 Written test results 37 2.2 Some common errors made by the students 37 Questionnaire for students 47 2.1 Questionnaire results 47 2.2 Data analysis 47 Probable causes of the errors 50 Measures to overcome these errors 52 PART III – CONCLUSION 55 References Appendix Appendix ii Abbreviations E.A: Error analysis Lists of tables and charts Chart1: The change in the position of constituents in passive transformation Table 1: Passive verbs in different tenses Table 2: The statistic of correct answers Table 3: Types of errors found in the study Table 4: Unnatural translation due to unchanging the voice Table 5: Errors of forming the past participle Table 6: Wrong translation samples with “bị, được” Table 7: Errors of using some special passive voice structures Table 8: List of special structures Table 9: Unnatural translation with some special structures iii PART I – INTRODUCTION I Rationale of the study According to statistics of recent studies, people who master English will see greater possibilities of success in doing research, getting promotion, and doing business They also confirm the relationship between English competence and high salary or increased trade Accordingly, the importance of English is undeniable because it has become the most popular language in all over the world This is the reason why English is now an obligatory subject in every high school in Vietnam In fact, many students are finding this subject more difficult than they used to think A lack of grammar can be one of major obstacles to mastering this second language There is an irrefutable fact that grammar is an integral part of every language, and English grammar is not an exception How would you study other specific fields in English without mastering grammar? English grammar includes many beautiful and unique aspects which we cannot find in other languages To Vietnamese learners, English grammar sometimes makes them confused due to the differences between English and our mother–tongue As a result, they have a lot of difficulties in communicating, especially in reading and writing in English The passive voice is considered to be one of the hardest grammatical items for Vietnamese learners to master Although there are a lot of pages, books, chapters which have been written about the passive voice, many students of English still have trouble explaining its usage in understandable ways In my experience in teaching English at Tran Phu Specialised High School in Hai Phong City, students often make common errors in using passive voice and causes of these errors have not been discovered yet The analysis of students’ errors is of great importance in teaching English It helps teachers identify students’ strategies of language learning and their level of proficiency so that teachers can find out suitable ways to improve current situations These are the reasons why I have decided to carry out a small study on common errors in the use of the English passive made by the grade 10 nonEnglish major students at Tran Phu Specialised High School II Objectives of the study: The study is aimed at firstly achieving deeper understanding of English passive voice, and above all, figuring out typical errors made by the students at Tran Phu Specialized High School in using passive voice Besides, the thesis is to find out causes of the typical errors in using passive voice and working out solutions to teaching students passive voice effectively Hence, the research is to answer the following questions: + What are the typical errors made by non – English majors at Tran Phu Specialized High School? + What are probable causes for these errors? + What are possible solutions to help the students overcome these errors? III Scope of the study: The study is focused on the passive voice However, it is not my ambition to cover every issue of the passive voice Within this small thesis, I desire to give readers some aspects of passive voice: a description of the passive voice sentence, uses, passive transformation constraints, and the formation of passive voice A comparison between English passive sentences and their Vietnamese equivalents is also mentioned Moreover, second language learners are various and different in the way of making errors However, because of limited size, the study will concentrate on giving an analysis of errors made by only 70 students from two non-major classes at Tran Phu Specialised High School IV Methods of the study: This study is a quantitative survey research In fact, a combination of data instruments is employed in an attempt to attain all the objectives above All the theory is attested by the exact data collected from a written test and a questionnaire for students which is presented in the later parts of the study From the analysis of the data, the problems will be found and the solutions will be given V Organization of the study: The study consists of three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion - Part I (Introduction) shows the rationale, the objectives, the scope, the methods and the organization of the study - Part II (Development) includes three chapters Chapter I reviews the literature related to English passive voice and error analysis Chapter II provides the methodology which takes a closer look at the subjects, the background, and the methods in use Chapter III analyzes actual errors made by the subjects This chapter also discusses the causes of these errors and suggests some solutions to the improvement of teaching this grammatical item - Part III (Conclusion) summarizes the content of the research and gives some suggestions for further study PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW An overview of voice in English 1.1 Voice Verb plays a vital role in English It involves many verbal categories such as mood, tense, aspect, and voice Among these aspects, it appears that voice is one of the most dominant parts of English grammar Accordingly, numerous grammarians have studied voice and defined what voice is in their own way Followings are some typical definitions, which are usually used in teaching and learning English “Voice is a grammatical category which makes it possible to view the action of sentence in two ways without change in the facts reported.” (Randolph Quirk, 1973:98) “Voice is a form or set of forms of a verb in which either person or thing that does something is the subject of the verb (the active voice) or the person or thing that is affected by the action of the verb is the object (the passive voice)” (The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) All things considered, the above definitions express the relationship between the subject and the action of the verb To illustrate this relationship, consider the following example:  Jim’s daughter drew that picture  That picture was drawn by Jim’s daughter In the first sentence, the subject “Jim’s daughter” is the person who performs the action “draw” Conversely, in the second sentence, “that picture” does not perform the action “That picture” is created by the action of drawing 1.2 Active and Passive Voice English has two voices, the active voice and the passive one, to indicate the relationship between the subject and the action described by its verbs (Illinois, R 397:1985) 1.2.1 Active Voice The active voice shows that the person or thing denoted by the subject of the sentence is the agent (doer) of the action expressed by the predicate it acts E.g.: About 30 million people are watching this program (a) Sentence (a) is said to be an active sentence since the form of verb is in the active voice The subject “about 30 million people” is performing the action of “watching” 1.2.2 Passive Voice “The passive voice serves to show that the person/thing denoted by the subject of the sentence is not the agent (the doer) of the action expressed by the predicative verb but is the object of this action The subject of a passive verb does not act but it acted upon, it undergoes an action” (Gordon, E.M., 1972:25) E.g.: This program is being watched by about 30 million people (b) On the contrary to sentence (a), the inanimate subject “this program” in (b) cannot perform the action of watching Actually, it is affected by this action The performer is now put at the end of the sentence after “by phrase” Sentence (b) is treated in grammar as a passive sentence 1.2.3 Differences between active voice and passive voice Comparing active voice and passive voice, several marked distinctions are noticed In terms of structure, the crystal difference is the verb form The following instances will elaborate this: John bought this clock (c) This clock was bought by John (d) The statistics on the table show that 10% regard passive as a difficult but interesting grammatical item Only 25% are of opposite opinions: interesting and easy The number of students describing passive as boring and difficult is 60% A smaller number of informants (5%) find it easy and boring In fact, 50% think they sometimes commit errors of passive voice, while up to 45% always The ones who rarely make mistakes only comprise 5%, and no students dare to state that they never make errors in passive voice In a nut shell, the above figures show that most of the students not think it is not easy to master English passives This can be explained by the high frequency they recognize that they make errors in the passive 2.2.2 Students’ strategies in learning passive voice It is obvious from the above table that 85% of the surveyed students always review passive voice after lessons; 10% sometimes That means most of them seem to have paid attention to the content of the lessons so that they can remember it for a test of their teacher The survey’s figures shows clearly that 50% learned English passive voice by learning by heart its rules and structures In their opinions, English passive voice has so many rules, so it will be easier if they can memorize all the passive voice rules provided by their teachers More students (60%) choose doing exercises as a good way for them to obtain a good grasp of passive voice Making up sentences accounts just a small number (6%) Other strategies make up 4% Additionally, only 20% more exercises than being asked by their teachers The rest just the exercises the teachers tells them to and no more In short, the above analysis shows that most students find English grammar in general and passive voice in particular necessary and a majority of them suppose doing exercise is the most effective way of grasping passive voice However, they are not at the same time studious They not find out some extra exercises to consolidate what they have learnt After the lesson, many of them try hard learning by heart all the rules given by their teacher In 43 other words, most of them learn passive voice passively Hence, it is necessary that the students should spend time practicing and applying what they have studied instead of memorizing all the theory of passive voice 2.2.3 Student’s attitudes towards the teachers’ teaching method From the survey questionnaires, the students confirm that many teachers (60%) teach them English passive voice almost in Vietnamese 25% use both English and Vietnamese, and just 15% use only English in teaching this grammatical category Some teachers explain that it takes them a lot of time to speak in English and then finally translate into Vietnamese, adding that only a few students are good at listening English Thus, they use Vietnamese to save time and to prevent their students from having a vague understanding of the lesson content In reverse, the figures display nearly 60% of the students find that using mother tongue in teaching passive voice is easy to understand but boring, 17% think the opposite Moreover, 28% think they may get confused if the explanations were in Vietnamese Generally, no one feel difficult to understand the grammar point if their teachers uses Vietnamese to teach When introducing a new verb, 80% students are rarely told whether it is a transitive or intransitive Similarly, 85% are never informed by their teachers whether it is regular or irregular verb Consequently, the students take risk adding “ed” to every verb they face up with in order to form its past participle While teaching the English passive voice, only 40% of the teachers tell their students when to use English passive voice The rest did not This makes the students tend to change every active sentence into passive Many students can transform an active sentence into a passive one and vice versa but not know why people prefer to use active voice in this situation but not in that circumstance In other words, the students have been trained to pass the exam, not to have a good communication 44 Last but not least, 70% think that the practice given by their teachers is not enough for them to do, while the others are of opposite opinions I myself asked some teachers about this issue, and they made an excuse that the teaching schedule does not give students much time for further practice in each lesson This seems to be a satisfactory answer Above is the data analysis of the questionnaire about learning and teaching grammar, especially English passive voice for non – English major students at Tran Phu specialized high school There are some achievements which should be reinforced, but there are still some short – comings which should be lessened The next section will discuss the probable causes of the errors Probable causes of the errors 3.1 Interlingual errors These errors are found in the misselection of voice One of the factors leading to these errors is that the students have a habit of thinking in their mother tongue This account can be used to explain why a large number of students use the passive voice in the following sentence when being asked to translate it into : Một số bọn trẻ bị ngã xuống sông The example shows that most students misunderstand “bị, được” as semantic devices of Vietnamese passive voice, but actually, they present negative or positive feelings of the speakers That is to say the Vietnamese people culturally use “được” to indicate something that they really enjoy doing or they feel honored of whereas they exploit “bị” to express unlucky things happen to them In other words, in the given example, it is obvious that the verbs after “bị, được” not present the act towards the object Hence, it is impossible to take the sentences in English passive voice 3.2 Intralingual errors 45 As said in the previous chapter, intralingual can be caused by three sources: overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions and incomplete application of rules It is the three sources above that lead to these errors The very first cause of intralingual errors is overgeneralization It is doubtless that the English passive is full of exceptions Therefore, the students often inaccurately use the past participles of some irregular verbs and transform several special English passive structures when over generalizing the rules and ignoring the exceptions The second cause leading to intralingual errors is ignorance of rule restrictions They are taught that all the agents, when mentioned, are preceded by “by” However, some students did not know that this rule cannot be applied when we deal with materials This is the reason that they produce some sentence like: The lock was covered by paint (incorrect) Another factor is that students are not exposed enough to L2 in which passive voice are very often used Therefore, the use of passive voice is not familiar enough to them The last source of intralingual errors is incomplete application of rules Several participants focus so much on the communication effect that they not pay attention to the verb tenses 3.3 Developmental errors As we all know, the source of developmental errors is false concepts hypothesized This is the background which is used to explain why the participants made developmental errors Sometimes, due to poor gradation of teaching items, students comprehend distinctions in the target language in the wrong way They may mechanically learn by heart which verbs are transitive or generalize the verb’s transitivity based on just few sentences they face previously For instance, they may cope with a sentence such as “the road was widened last month” beforehand, and take it for granted that “widen” can be 46 used in passive voice in any cases This causes them to produce an incorrect sentence such as “It may be possible to tell whether the hole over the Antarctic has been widened.” Measures to overcome these errors As mentioned above, a lot of errors belonging to eight different types were committed in the study These errors were made due to three kinds of sources: interference sources, intralingual sources and developmental sources First of all, the interference of the first language can be seen as an explanation for a majority of errors committed in the passive The teachers are suggested to limit the interference of the source language and help students use the foreign language as much as possible For instance, at presentation stage, the teachers should not use too much Vietnamese to explain because this may make students confused with the different meanings of the words “bị, được” or depend too much on these lexical passive words Instead, they should combine both English and Vietnamese to present them In practice stage, translation exercises should be delayed until they already obtain a good grasp of the form, meaning and use of the passive patterns by doing some other exercises In the second analysis, English passive voice and so- called Vietnamese equivalent is said to have much more differences than similarities Therefore, some teachers think that we should not mention the concept of passiveness in Vietnamese However, as the influence of source language cannot be avoided completely, the importance here is to figure out effective ways to indicate the contrary between the two passives, especially the word “được” as a luck indicator and “bị” as an opposite one One of the mistakes is that many of the students wrote: “One of the kids was fallen into the river.” just because in Vietnamese we often say “bị ngã xuống sông” It is important to point out that in English “fall” is transitive and in the above sentence “one of the kids” is really the agent of the action “fall” In a nutshell, to some 47 extents, when teaching English passive voice, the teachers should refer to Vietnamese and English cultures in appropriate stages so that the students can get along with the passive without any difficulty Another way to beat the interference errors is get students to more practice Therefore, it is advisable that teachers have to be familiar with their students’ level and give them exercises from simple to complex and are of variety in order to motivate them to The pupils should practice again and again the same patterns until they can use them automatically Secondly, to reduce the intralingual errors, the teachers should focus students’ attention on those which are irregular and easily confused to them Moreover, when presenting the English passive voice, the students should be asked to compare different passive constructions if necessary and finally summarize them into a list of specific structures with their own ways to change into the passive In addition, since English has many special passive patterns and most of the students seem to mistake them, systematism should be along with teaching That is to say passive patterns should be sequenced in the order of complexity both in form and in use so that the students are ready to the more difficult structures And up to students’ level, the teachers can determine how many structures should be presented in a period but on average only one new passive structure should be focused on for the sake of students’ concentration and efficient acquisition Besides, tenses are problematic too In fact, if some of them remember to use passive voice, they at the same time forget the tense and vice versa For this reason, teachers should consolidate verb tenses to make students use the English passive fluently Last but not least, to lessen developmental errors, the very first thing the teachers should is to mention the transitivity of verbs when introducing a new verb: is it a transitive one? And more importantly, the teacher should 48 contextualize the verb so that the students can understand with which meaning a verb can have passive form By the way, because students’ making errors in passive voice is unavoidable, well – prepared teachers are often not so surprised to cope with various mistakes made by the students because they can spot the anticipated errors basing on their knowledge of potential of pitfalls, their experience and students’ knowledge of mother tongue In other words, if the teachers can predict the students’ problems and have some suitable teaching techniques to apply, they will get more confidence in helping their students, and this no doubt will make their students put more trust in their teacher’s competence 49 PART III – CONCLUSION In conclusion, English passive voice is interesting However, its complexity sometimes troubles many teachers of English and of course is a big problem for most learners So what can be done about it? This study is mainly concerned with uncovering common errors in using English passive voice made by non - English majors at Tran Phu Specialised High School, Hai Phong in order to work out the causes and solutions to improve the situation of learning and teaching English passive The study reviews the theoretical background of English passive voice and has a careful look at the error analysis In addition, it has been conducted with seventy subjects from two classes of grade 10th non –English majors and a written test followed by a questionnaire for students as the instruments The findings of the study show that most of the errors are made in special passive structures and voice choice Some other less common errors are those with tenses, irregular past participles, translation, and transformation of active questions The least popular error is associated with the use of “by” agent The analysis discovered that three types of causes leading to these errors are of interlingual, intralingual, and developmental errors The interlingual errors are commonly found in the misselection of voice due to the interference of the source language What is meant here is that it is primarily because of the habit of thinking word by word in Vietnamese that has badly affected the students’ productive use of the passive Secondly, the intralingual errors are mainly concerned with the past participle of irregular verbs and several special passive patterns The developmental errors are made chiefly because of the poor gradation of some teaching items Basing on the findings, some suggestions which focus on the presentation and practice stages have been given to the teachers In particular, the teachers are advised to avoid the overuse of Vietnamese in the presentation stage to 50 prevent students from thinking in Vietnamese Moreover, the special passive patterns should be presented in the order of difficulty, little by little, and in a systematic way so that students are not confused For practice stage, it is said that practice makes perfect This is especially true in this case when students have to face up with a lot of special passive structures However, some sorts of exercises such as translation and the essays writing which may encourage the influence of Vietnamese should be carefully designed and given at the right time On the other hand, the difference between the English transitivity and Vietnamese one should be mentioned by using cultural factors More importantly, learning the English passive is a process It has involved the way a teacher presents a verb while teaching vocabulary Here, it is recommended that he introduce the verb in context with its transitivity and its past participle Hopefully, these recommendations will be somehow useful to whom concerned Because of limited time and size of this minor thesis, it is certainly inadequate and detailed as the author expected Another issue raised here is that the samples were not collected longitudinally; therefore it is hard to see how the learner’s different errors develop overtime Moreover, it is suggested that other studies on the same subject with a larger quantity of samples should be carried out for the sake of reliable data Finally, it is advisable that a questionnaire for teachers should be made as well so that we can have a more comprehensive picture on the errors committed by learners in the use of the English passive In short, since other defects of this small paper are inevitable, the criticism is welcomed to make it better 51 References: Alexander, L.G Longman English Grammar Practice Longman group Limited, London,1998 Brown, H Douglas, 1987 Principles of Language learning and Teaching, Prentice Hall Regents Brown, H Douglas, 1980 Principles of Language learning and Teaching, Prentice Hall Regents Corder, S P., 1967 The significance of Learners’ Errors in IRAL, 5, No.4 Corder, S.1971 Introducing applied linguistics Penguin Ellis, R.1994 The study of second language acquisition Oxford University Press Ellis, R.1997 The study of second language acquisition Oxford University Press Ellis, R 1985 Understanding Second Language Acquisition Oxford University Press Gordon, E.M A grammar of present day English Mosco Vyssgja Skola, 1982 10 Illinois, R Composition and Grammar Laidlaw brothers Published, 1985 11 Lennon, P, 1991 Error: some problems of definition and identification, in Applied Linguistic, vol 12, num.2, Oxford 12 Michael Vince and Peter Sunderland Advanced Language Practice Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2003 13 Micheal Swan Practical English Usage (Third Edition) Oxford University Press, 2005 14 Quirk, R and S Greenbaum and G.Leech and J Svartrick A grammar of contemporary English Longman group Limited, London, 1972 52 15 Richards, J.C et al.1992 Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics Essex, Longman 16 Richard, Jack C., 1971 A Non – contrastive Approach to Error Analysis English Language Teaching, 25, No 17 Richard, Jack C., and Gloria P Sampson, 1974 The Study of learner English London: Longman 18 Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik, 1985 A comprehensive grammar of the English language Longman group limited 19 Stenson, Nancy, 1974 Induced Errors Newbury House Publishers Websites: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/active-voice-versus-passivevoice.aspx http://www.grammarenglish.org/verbs-not-used-in-the-passive-voice 53 Appendix WRITTEN TEST (Time allowed: 60 minutes) I Put the verbs in the blanks in the correct forms Some variations in tenses may be possible It isn’t clear how far the ozone layer (1- damage) by aerosol sprays It may be possible to tell whether the hole over the Antarctic (2-widen) after the area (3-investigate) by high – flying planes These days, even the most remote places on earth (4-visit) by tourists Package tours (5-can / arrange) for almost any where, from the Himalayas to the Amazonian jungle We (6-constanly remind) of the way the world (7-become) smaller when events taking place in different parts of the globe (8- flash) on our television screen If you (9-involve) in a car accident and someone (10- hurt), you (11-have to) report the matter to the police If only the vehicles (12damage), drivers should exchange names and addresses II Rewrite these sentences using passive voice (if possible) Who composed “The Secret Garden”? No one saw the monkey climbing over the fence We arrived at the station earlier People said that he was jealous of her They have made him return the money I saw John paint the fence Please your exercises His wife is taking care of him in hospital We’re having him repair our car I 10 He wants someone to take photographs 11 They threw away the old newspapers 12 Paint covered the lock 13 They let us go yesterday 14 Children often look up to strict teachers 15 The noise coming from behind the fence caught my attention III Translate these sentences into English Tối qua bị xe đạp Chiếc cặp mua tuần trước Lan vừa nhận thư Hùng Một số bọn trẻ bị ngã xuống sông Cái cốc rửa rồi, có phải khơng? Hoa mẹ mua cho máy tính IV Translate these sentences into Vietnamese He is said to be a car theft It is rumored that she’s getting promoted She had her bag stolen This famous school was founded over a century ago A new public library is being built by our city council This program is being watched by about 30 million people Thank for your assistance II Appendix QUESTIONAIRE FOR STUDENTS This questionnaire is designed for my study on “Passive Voice and Common Errors Made by the Grade 10 Non-English Major Students at Tran Phu Specialized High School, HP” Your assistance in completing the following items is highly appreciated You can be confident that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Please tick (v) where appropriate Learning English passive voice is a Difficult but interesting  b Interesting and easy  c Boring and difficult  d Easy and boring  How often you make errors of passive voice (when doing exercises, tests, composition)? a Always  b Sometimes  c Rarely  d Never  How often you revise passive voice after lessons? a Always  b Sometimes  c Never  How you learn passive voice? You can tick more than one box a By learning by heart its rules and structures  b By making up sentences according to its rules and structures  c By doing English passive voice exercises  d Other… Do you more passive voice exercises than what your teacher asks you to do? III a Yes  b No  Which language your teachers often use to teach passive voice? a English  b Both English and Vietnamese  c Vietnamese  What you think of using Vietnamese in teaching English passive voice? a Easy to understand but boring  b Easy to understand and interesting  c Easy to get confused  d Difficult to understand  When introducing a new verb, does your teacher tell you that it is a a Transitive or intransitive verb  b Regular or irregular verb  (You can tick more than one box) When teaching passive voice, does your teacher tell you in what circumstances the Passive is used? a Yes  b No  10 Does you teacher give you much practice when teaching passive voice? a Yes  b No  Thank for your assistance IV ... errors in the use of the English passive made by the grade 10 nonEnglish major students at Tran Phu Specialised High School II Objectives of the study: The study is aimed at firstly achieving deeper... trouble explaining its usage in understandable ways In my experience in teaching English at Tran Phu Specialised High School in Hai Phong City, students often make common errors in using passive voice... forms of the sentence, since either of two noun phrases can become the subject of a passive sentence E.g.: They had made good use of the house ~ Good use had been made of the house ~ The house