Learn how to make Perfect Passives

 

Perfect Passives

Before you look at this lesson, make sure you are comfortable with making the present perfect, the past perfect and thefuture perfect forms. You should also read about simple passives first.

All perfect forms are made with have + past participle. For example:

My boyfriend has made dinner three times this week.

My boyfriend had made dinner by 6.30 last night.

My boyfriend will have made dinner by 6.30 tonight.

All perfect passives use been + past participle instead of just the past participle (for example "been made" instead of "made")

	Continuous Passive
Present	Dinner has been made three times this week.
Past	Dinner had been made by 6.30 last night.
Future	Dinner will have been made by 6.30 tonight.

When to use passives

Remember, we use passive forms when we don't know or don't care who did something, when it is obvious who did something, or when we want to focus on the object of the active sentence.

Oh no! A thief has stolen my bag!

Oh no! My bag's been stolen!

In the two sentences above, the second one is better because obviously a thief did it, we don't know exactly who the thief is, and the bag is the most important thing in the sentence.

From: The Tiny TEFL Teacher