Teaching and Assessing the English Passive Voice Inductively

César Alberto Navas Brenes

InterSedes, Revista electrónica de las sedes regionales de la Universidad de Costa Rica,

ISSN 2215-2458, Volumen XXV, Número 51, Enero-Junio, 2024.

10.15517/isucr.v25i51 | intersedes.ucr.ac.cr | intersedes@ucr.ac.cr

A: To analyze the eect of the inductive instruction in the acquisition of the English Passive

Voice in EFL students is the main concern of this research. Although this target population takes the

second course of the English major, this is the rst-time learners study and assimilate the passive voice

at this level. Aer administering a diagnostic instrument on such structure, the instructor observed the

acquisition, progress, and usage of the passive voice in two types of written tasks throughout the course.

At the end of the semester, students will take a second, non-graded instrument to assess the acquisition

of the passive voice with the help of Task-based activities.

R: Este estudio de caso examina el efecto de la instrucción inductiva en la adquisición de la voz

pasiva del inglés en un grupo de veinticinco estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. Aunque esta

población meta se encuentra en el segundo curso del Bachillerato en Inglés, esta es la primera ocasión en

la cual los estudiantes estudian y asimilan la voz pasiva en este nivel. Después de aplicar un instrumento

diagnóstico para evaluar esta estructura, el docente analiza la adquisición, progreso y uso de la voz

pasiva en dos tipos de actividades escritas a lo largo del semestre. Al nalizar, los estudiantes completan

un segundo instrumento con el n de evaluar la adquisición de la voz pasiva por medio de actividades

basadas en tareas.

Universidad de Costa Rica. San José

cesar.navas@ucr.ac.cr

Publicado por la Editorial Sede del Pacíco, Universidad de Costa Rica

P : Voz pasiva, Aprendizaje Basado en Tareas, planeamiento de lección, aprendizaje

inductivo, enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera

K: Passive voice, Task-based learning, lesson planning, inductive learning, TEFL

La enseñanza y evaluación inductivas de la voz pasiva en inglés

Recibido: 9-5-23 | Aceptado: 5-7-23

C  (APA): Navas Brenes, C.A. (2024). Teaching and Assessing the English Passive Voice Inductively. InterSedes,

25(51), 1-30 . DOI10.15517/isucr.v25i51.54029

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Introduction

Some grammar structures seem to be very challenging, for

low intermediate level students. e passive voice is one of them

even though it is traditionally taught with form-focused materials.

However, new course textbooks and instructors tend to teach

grammar structure by designing task-based lesson plans. In fact,

recent materials derive from active methodologies to innovate

teaching and the teaching and learning processes; thus, learners

focus on meaning before exploring and analyzing form. e

underlying aspects behind a grammar rule such as the passive

voice, Willis (2003, p.218) mentions three elements that may

orient learners through this process:

A. Recognition: this deals with the identication of the

relationship between clauses or words.

B. System building: learners will be able to construct more

complex and acceptable noun phrases.

C. Exploration: learners need time to explore when the

usage of a given from is appropriate. To write a concept,

it is more appropriate to use the passive voice instead of

the active voice. What is the most signicant dierence?

Designing task-based materials to teach the passive voice is not

easy. e instructors should get acquainted with the framework

of such methodology. Willis J. and Willis D. (cited in Carter and

Nunan, 2001) point out that “one feature of TBL [task-based

learning], therefore, is that learners carrying out a task are free to

use any language they can do to achieve the outcome: language

forms are not prescribed in advance” (p.174). ere has been some

debate in regard to active methodologies and the notion of learner-

centeredness, so Nunan (1999) claries the following:

[…] in a learner-centered classroom, key decisions about

what will be taught, how it will be taught, when it will

be taught, and how it will be assessed will be made with

reference to the learner. Information about learners, and,

where feasible, from learners will be used to answer the key

questions of what, how, when, and how well. (p.11)

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So, in other words, learner-centeredness does not mean to

transfer teacher’s responsibilities and instructional decisions to

students; on the contrary, the idea is for the learner to implement

learning and metacognitive strategies throughout the EFL process.

Learners use authentic materials to process input, carry out the

main task, explore, and infer the rule it comprises. It is worth noting

that authentic texts are “not […] written for language teaching

purposes to illustrate a specic language point, or simplied to the

point of distorting natural language use” (Tomlinson, 1998, p.46).

When it comes to designing this type of meaning-based tasks, the

process is challenging and time consuming. Perhaps, this is why

many instructors end up explaining complex grammar structures

with traditional forms, such as the Presentation, Practice, and

Production model. us, this case study aims to address the

following two research questions:

1. Does task-based instruction have a positive eect on stu-

dents’ understanding of the passive form?

2. To what extent, do students’ outcomes (pretest, posttest, and

two writing tasks) reect such gain?

Review of the Literature

Teaching grammar through inductive approaches has come

within the scope of recent EFL course textbooks and programs.

Although deductive teaching of grammar forms has prevailed in

many recent language programs, inferential instruction seems to be

a more challenging method to help learners assimilate and process

new structures. Before referring to the insights regarding inductive

instruction, it is essential to review how individuals acquire L1

and L2 structures. In fact, achieving the desired positive evidence

(from their parents’ feedback) and linguistic input, “by about 5

years of age [children] have mastered most of the constructions

of their language, although their vocabulary is still growing”

(Guasti, 2002, p.4). Also, a bilingual child is more likely to surpass

a monolingual one as the former will “have superior creative

thinking and exibility of thought, which is assumed to emerge

from being able to see things from two perspectives as a function

of being in possession of two linguistic systems” (Dornyei, 2009,

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p.17). Language acquisition, thus, fosters cognitive and problem-

solving skills.

e study of how individuals acquire L2 grammatical and

phonological constructions is complex. In relation to this, Nunan

(1999) explains that “comparatively few individuals who begin the

study of a second language aer they have mastered their rst ever

develop the equivalent of native mastery” (p.40). At this point, one

should review the notions of naturalistic and instructed second

language acquisition. e former concept refers to the acquisition

of an L2 in the native environment over a long period of time;

individuals are exposed to a vast range of input. On the other

hand, Dornyei (2009) explains the main idea behind the notion of

instructed second-language acquisition (SLA):

In contrast, instructed SLA—that is, the learning processes

whereby an L2 is predominantly mastered within an

educational context with no or little contact with native

speakers of the L2—follows a very dierent principle;

here the course of L2 development is largely determined

by formal curricula and syllabi, and even small details of

classroom events are oen controlled by man-made lesson

plans. us, in such formal school contexts the role of human

agency—that is, the impact of policymakers, curriculum

designers, materials writers, language teachers, and testers—

is paramount. (p.20)

ere are key factors that inuence L2 acquisition such as age,

extrinsic or intrinsic motivation, predisposition, social interaction,

and other constituents of an educational setting; some of these

include “teacher and student roles, classroom management, inter-

student relationships and interaction patterns, group norms,

classroom goal structures, and group cohesiveness […]” (Dornyei,

2009, p.20).

Systematicity of second language learning is another main

aspect. is means that the speed in which learners move through

the developmental stages of grammar acquisition may vary. Some

individuals are more likely to acquire grammar structures faster

than others. Eventually, they would assimilate and reach more

advanced L2 constructions as a result of formal instruction.

So, although systematicity is a feature of interlanguage, it is

also variable. e same source (Mitchell and Myles, 2004, p.16)

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explains that “learners’ utterances seem to vary from moment to

moment, in the types of errors that are made, and learners seem

liable to switch between a range of correct and incorrect forms

over lengthy periods of time.” ese two features, systematicity

and variability, occur in the acquisition of L1 and L2, but the latter

is more substantial when it comes to learning a second language.

Another aspect related to second language learning (SLL) is

called fossilization, which interferes with the progress of producing

correct L2 constructions. Richards, Platt, and Platt (1992) dene

this as “a process which sometimes occurs in which incorrect

linguistic features become a permanent part of the way, and […]

grammar may become xed” (p.145). us, interlanguage diers

markedly from correct conventions. Mitchell and Myles (2004)

go beyond and explains that there are two possible explanations

for such phenomenon: at a psycholinguistic level, some learners

are unable to transfer L1 learning mechanisms; furthermore, at a

sociolinguistic level, they are unable to plug into the L2 community

successfully (p.18).

ere are signicant dierences and similarities among rst

and second language acquisition. Dornyei (2009, p.21-23) lists the

following aspects:

• ere is an understandable dierential success.

• L1 acquisition is automatic, but motivation in SLL is essen-

tial.

• L1 acquisition tends to be homogenous while L2 is characte-

rized by many heterogeneous cognitive processes.

• e surrounding knowledge and context in L1 acquisition

and the knowledge of the world involved in SLL play a key

role.

• ere is a language transfer between L1 and L2, and this may

hinder various facets of SLL, being accent and interference

examples of such aspect.

• e amount of input diers in L1 and L2 acquisition.

• e notions of implicit and explicit learning are present in

both processes.

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As the main issue behind this study is related to grammar

acquisition of the passive voice, there are three crucial concepts

to explain and distinguish: order of acquisition, competence, and

performance in SLL. As mentioned before, learners move through

developmental stages; that is, there is a sequence in which grammar

constructions are acquired. Saville-Troike (2006) enumerates three

features of this multidimensional model:

(1) “Learners acquire certain grammatical structures in a de-

velopmental sequence. (2) Developmental sequences reect

how learners overcome processing limitations. (3) Langua-

ge instruction which targets developmental features will be

successful only if learners have already mastered the proces-

sing operations which are associated with the previous stage

of acquisition. (p.81)

e second concept to dene is competence, which is

sometimes confused with the notion of performance. Richards,

Platt, and Platt (1992, p.68) dene competence as “a person’s

ability to create and understand sentences, including sentences

they have never heard before.” Learners also have the capacity to

dierentiate those possible correct structures from those that are

incorrect. Performance, on the other hand, not only refers to how

people speak a language but also “interpret and process incoming

language data in some form, for normal language development to

take place” (Mitchell and Myles, 2004, p.20).

The Acquisition of Grammar Constructions

Although learners can be able to get acquainted with grammar

rules deductively or inductively, linguists have opposing views

in this regard. is is signicant with certain “systems that defy

explanation either because they are too complex (the distinction

between past perfect and past simple; the use of the passive) or

too wide-ranging (pattern grammar)” (Willis, 2003, p.219). For

students to rapidly assimilate grammar rules, some experts have

become advocates for explicit instruction; an example of this is the

traditional PPP framework (Presentation, Practice, Production) to

teach new rules. Some teaching methods tend to focus on form

and others on meaning, and it seems that students assimilate

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and acquire a certain linguistic item when they are able to do so.

In relation to inductive learning and consciously raising tasks,

Loewen (2020) explains the following:

In this type of instruction, learners are presented with exam-

ples of a specic structure, and they are asked to extract the

pattern of rule that pertains to all the examples. For example,

learners might be provided with a text in Spanish containing

multiple examples of verbs in the preterit and imperfect for-

ms. Learners could be asked to identify the ways in which

the two verb aspects are used and extrapolate a rule or set of

rules to explain the grammatical patterns. In this way, cons-

ciously raising activities are inductive because learners must

gure out the rules from the data they are given. (p.109-110)

is inductive approach is clearly more challenging as guring

out the structure behind comprehensible input is not easy at lower

levels. One disadvantage relies on the fact that certain populations

tend to prefer traditional, deductive teaching methodologies.

Some language learners, especially adults, may prefer traditional

grammar explanations as content and rules is explicitly presented.

is is also the case of very large groups of language learners since

instructors should monitor if everybody has successfully identied

and assimilated the rule behind a target linguistic item.

The English Passive Voice

ere are various aspects that increase the level of diculty

at the moment of assimilating the passive voice. Willis (2003)

explains that learners need to pay attention to the function of the

verb tense as it will “enable us to orient ourselves to the elements

in the proposition and to relate them to one another, particularly

in terms of time” (p.34). Also, speakers and writers should analyze

text orientation, the theme or topic of the idea, the organization of

the clauses (subject versus agent), and discourse markers such as

cleing (i.e., a sentence with the form It is known as the physician

who operated on the patient); in short, “the passive voice is one

of the devices we have for organizing information in the clause”

(Willis, 2003, p.36).

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Basically, in the passive voice, the subject of the sentence

undergoes the eects of the action. Traditionally, many language

instructors tend to ban this structure in their writing courses as it,

supposedly, hinders meaning and implies an impressive and weak

eect. Writers should avoid the overuse of passive sentences in

their texts. Folse (2016, p.300) highlights three of the some of the

most common mistakes that English learners make in regard to

the construction of the passive voice:

a. Using the passive voice when the active voice is the appro-

priate and correct target form (e.g., e lamp broke the cat).

b. Omitting the conjugated form of BE (e.g., e books written

by the French scholars).

c. Including the BY + agent phrase when this is obvious (e.g.,

e bike was stolen by someone).

Also, Flores and Alfaro (1995, p.76-77) explained the six

rules behind the usage of the English passive voice, which are

summarized in Table 1:

T :

R 

Rules Example

1.To signal that the performer is

unknown.

e diagnostic test was carried out

in the language laboratory.

2. To hint that the "doer" is a

general group.

e gathering was held in the

morning.

3. To avoid mentioning the

performer of the action.

Second grammar instrument or

posttest.

4. To place emphasis on the

"receiver" rather than on the

performer of the action.

e employees were interviewed by

the human resources department.

5. To describe a scientic

experiment or process.

e corpus was recorded for

further analysis.

Source: Flores, Berta y Alfaro, Vilma (1995). Practicing english Syntax.

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In short, active and passive sentences express actions, but

the active voice focuses on the doer of this action while passive

constructions highlight their subject.

To transform an active sentence into a passive one, it is necessary

to keep the same verb form. Alfaro and Flores (1995, p.75) explain

that “no part at all of the verb form in the active sentence can

be deleted in the corresponding passive one. us, the modal

auxiliaries, the have plus past participle, and the be plus -ing forms

that appear in an active sentence will appear in the passive one.”

With explicit or traditional methodologies, this is something that

instructors may easily explain, but with inductive approaches, this

clearly constitutes a challenge.

Active and passive sentences may be formed by several verb

tenses. However, language learners should be acquainted with the

fact that some passive forms are not common, as opposed to the

active version. is is the case of some progressive tenses. Folse

(2016) warned that “a search in the 480-million-word COCA

(Corpus of Contemporary American English) found just 13

examples of past perfect progressive tense in passive voice” (p.97).

For example, it is not very common to encounter a sentence such

as in one hour, these patients will have been waiting in this clinic

for approximately six hours. us, the same source points out that

language instructors should “need to establish which verb tenses

are most useful for our student populations in the correct genre of

reading material […] as well as which voice those verb tenses might

occur in” (Folse, 2016, p.97). is has important implications at

the moment of developing materials, especially in ESP contexts.

e recognition of the passive voice has been a subject of

research. In her study, Horgan (1978, p.3) analyzed the recognition

of passive sentence elicited from children and young adults, and

she distinguishes between various types of passive constructions;

the rst type is known as the full passive + agent, which contains “a

form of be or not, a past tense marker, and a preposition followed

by a noun phrase that could logically be construed as the actor

or instrument.” An example of this is e child was scolded by his

father for what he did. Consider the following two types of full

passive constructions:

• e vaccine was distributed by a well-known pharmaceutical

company.

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• e houses were destroyed by the re.

Both are full passives; however, the rst sentence is an

instrumental reversible passive as the noun phrase may function as

the doer of the action and the object of the sentence. Semantically,

this is not possible with the second sentence, which is an agentive

non-reversible passive form because the construction e re

was destroyed by the houses is not allowed. In addition, Horgan

explains that a truncated passive lacks the agent (i.e., e tests

were graded), and there is a type of stative construction, which

has to do with “a state of aairs rather than to an action, event, or

process” (i.e., ey got killed) (1978, p.6).

Additional research has been conducted to study the

recognition and acquisition of the passive voice. In her single-

subject pilot research, Hill (1998) worked with a child to observe

the recognition of reversible passive and active constructions; as

part of her conclusions, she observed that there was a degree of

comprehension of the passive form at an early age (p.63). is also

means that they are aware of the dierence between active and

passive forms. Hill explained that “if the subject was at the stage

of development where he comprehended the passive construction,

but was unable to produce them, he should have correctly acted

out the reversible passive test sentences” (Hill, 1998, p. 67). e

analysis of word order was one of the strategies she used to

dierentiate appropriate or unacceptable reversible sentences.

Cognitive grammar was also studied in the teaching of active

and passive sentences. Bielak, Pawlak, and Mystkowska (2003)

investigated the benets of feature-focused grammatical teaching

of the active and passive voices (form, meaning, and use) with the

implementation of cognitive grammar (CG); in this case, despite the

limitation of time, there was “relatively high eectiveness of both

instructional options in fostering the use of the target structures

in both more controlled and more spontaneous performance, with

traditional instruction being more successful than that based on

CG with respect to the latter” (p.581).

Task-based Learning (TBL)

Among recent teaching and learning methodologies, task-

based learning places EFL students at the center of the educational

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process. To teach grammar rules, this methodology can be used

to vary traditional form-focused structures. us, students

assimilate structures inductively by accessing authentic materials

and task-based exercises. In relation to this, Willis (1996) explains

that “we have had the experience of presenting and practicing a

particular language pattern, with learners getting it right during

the form-focused practice stage, but then, at the meaning-focused

free production stage, they do not use the "new’ item at all” (p.4).

Learners focus on meaning and carry out a series of appealing

tasks without receiving explicit, direct, or traditional instruction

on the target rule, which not the case of well-known Presentation-

Practice-Production materials.

To successfully design TBL materials, language instructors must

get familiar with all the components of the following framework

proposed by Willis (1996, p.6):

Pre-task: Introduction to the topic and task instructions.

is gives instruction to teacher talk, but brainstorming

useful topic words and phrases is a good way of involving

students in this phrase. Task cycle: Learners use language

in varying circumstances and are exposed to others by

using it. e Task Phase gives opportunities for interactive

spontaneous use of language in the privacy of their pairs

where mistakes don´t matter. e Report Phase encourages

a combination of accuracy and uency […]. e Planning

Phase is the time for teacher input and advice. Learners plan

what to say at the report stage, to correct mistakes, to thrive

to use “better” language and to focus on form […]. Language

focus: Analysis and Practice. Learners get repeated exposure

to the language from the task cycle and have a chance to

focus on form and ask questions about language features.

(p.6)

e concept of task plays a key role in this active learning,

but it has to follow the characteristics aforementioned so as to

guide learners through the TBL lesson (or lessons). In summary,

task-based learning includes various advantages when designing

grammar-based lessons:

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a. To teach a target grammar form, teachers must carefully

select authentic materials in which it is used. is input

should correlate with the learners’ level of prociency.

b. It would be relevant to indicate that, ideally, the new

grammar rule should not have been explained before in the

current course or in the previous course that belongs to the

same program.

c. TBL materials may integrate various language skills. So,

instructors can incorporate reading comprehension,

listening texts, vocabulary, and grammar in the same lesson.

d. Willis J. and Willis D. (cited in Carter and Nunan, 2001)

point out that “the challenge for TBL, therefore, is to devise a

methodology which aords learners the freedom to engage

in natural learning processes in the creation of a meaning

system” (p.174).

To explain how to create a lesson to teach the English passive

voice, it is worth noting to indicate that this is “a context-sensitive

grammatical” form in regard to discourse and context; in other

words, to internalize and produce such structure consists of

“a much larger process in which the semantic, pragmatic, and

discourse appropriateness of the construction itself is also judge

with respect to the context in which it is used” (Celce-Murcia and

Olshtain, 2000, p.52). So, before designing a TBL sample lesson to

teach and practice the passive voice at an intermediate level, it is

important to dene the concept of task in this methodology.

Dave and Jane Willis (cited in Carter and Nunan, 2001) point

out that “one feature of TBL, therefore, is that learners carrying out

a task are free to use any language they can to achieve the outcome:

language forms are not prescribed in advance” (p.174). Also, Ellis

(2003) denes the notion of task are those "activities that call for

primary meaning-focused language use. In contrast, exercises are

activities that call for primary form-focused language use” (p.3).

e purpose of the task cycle is, as Ellis explains, for

"participants to function primary as language users in the sense

that they must employ the same kinds of communicative processes

as those involved in real-world activities” (p.3). For this reason, the

lesson, which intends to integrate various skills, places the form-

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based activities at the end of the process. us, the TBL framework

consists of three main stages:

• Pre-task (meaning-based activities)

• Task cycle: meaning-based activities (task, planning, and

report)

• Post-task: analysis and further practice (form-based or

consciousness-raising activities)

e rst stage of the pre-task has two steps. With this framework,

the topic of the lesson is introduced. To clearly guide the use of the

passive voice and contextualize this lesson, the theme of the lesson

presented in this case study is the world´s amazing inventions. In

small groups, learners share their ideas with their team members

in regard to a general question: What is, in your opinion, the

greatest idea or invention? As a second pre-task activity, the

instructor distributes a set of sixteen cards; some just include the

name of a well-known invention (e.g., hay, steam engine, plow, the

Gregorian calendar, compass, phonograph, the Swiss army knife,

among others), and the other half includes a short text with their

descriptions. Each student reads out loud the content of each text.

e idea is to match descriptions with the correct name. Texts must

include at least four sentences in the passive voice. Inductively,

students get acquainted with the use of the passive voice. Due to

the level of diculty of the descriptions, most students focus on

nding out the meaning and/or pronunciation of unknown or

technical words.

e next part is known as the Task Cycle. It is divided into

three sections: task, planning, and report. e task, according to

Nunan (2004), “should also have a sense of completeness, being

able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a

beginning, a middle and an end” (p.4). For this reason, this stage has

three parts that integrate a warm-up activity, a vocabulary-building

activity, an information-gap task, and a series of comprehension

questions to report on their work to the class. e rst activity is

an adaptation of an introductory task proposed by Dave Willis and

Jane Willis (2007, p.37); so, students are given a series of sentences

about inventions to be discussed in small groups.

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Methodology

Participants

ere were 25 English majors who participated in this case

study. ey were all Spanish speakers. ey took the team-

taught course LM-1002 Integrated English II at the University of

Costa Rica. is level of diculty of this course in intermediate

(B1+CEFR). is is the second course of the programs of English

and English Teaching. e age of this population ranged from 17

to 25 years. A signicant aspect of this group is that most students

had previously taken virtual courses (rst semester of the year)

due to the recent pandemic, so this is the rst time they resume

their courses on campus.

Although most students took the required rst-year course

LM-1001 Integrated English I, the level of prociency was

heterogeneous. e new textbook series of both courses presents

grammar content inductively, which is a challenging feature for

students and instructors. In terms of the target course, students have

access to two printed books and a commercial platform. As this is

a team-taught course, both professors may also implement virtual

activities via Mediación Virtual, the mandatory, institutionalized

platform to complement computer-lab sessions.

Materials

e course Integrated English II includes two textbooks. Each

book covers two macro skills. e Reading/Writing textbook

(Kirn and Hartmann, 2020) barely introduces the passive in its

h chapter. us, the language focus section briey mentions

the use of the passive voice, and this is followed by an exercise to

contrast two sentences for students to decide which one is more

appropriate. en, students are asked to identify all the passive

constructions in a reading text. Finally, they are asked to correct

two sentences, which sound better if active forms are changed into

passive ones. Clearly, this Language Focus section is not enough

to fully teach, learn, assimilate, and acquire such grammatical

content. To fulll this signicant gap, the instructor decided

to design activities to teach the passive voice in an inductive,

challenging, and thorough way. In other words, to teach this

content inductively, more systematically, and student-centered,

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CÉSAR ALBERTO NAVAS BRENES | Teaching and Assessing

the instructor created original materials that follow the principles

behind Task-based Learning.

Assessment Instruments

Although this course covers the four macro skills (listening,

speaking, reading, and writing) as well as the four micro skills

(vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and culture), this study

focuses on the passive voice, being the most dicult grammar

content to learn for students. On the rst day of this face-to-face

course, students took a grammar test to assess such form. ere

are twenty-one items distributed in four types of exercises: (1)

sentence production, passage completion, sentence formation, and

question formation.

Before taking this assessment instrument, students were not

told that the passive voice is the target topic. Instead, they had to

complete the four exercises based on their prior knowledge. During

the last week of the course, students took the same instrument to

measure how much they have learned not only about the passive

voice but also about sentence formation, lexicon, and verb tenses.

Finally, students received feedback on such instrument.

e second type of instrument to elicit students’ data was an

academic, in-class composition. Each instructor was in charge of

teaching the writing process and revising two writing outcomes:

a dra composition and its nal, edited version. In this case, they

were given three topics to choose from. As the rst dra is to be

improved by adding more content or incorporating a few sentences,

the nal version is, therefore, somewhat more extensive. e idea

is to observe if students are able to use passive constructions

correctly in both compositions. Error correction is part of this.

Table 2 summarizes the research procedure of this study:

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T :

R 

Week Procedure

Week 11 In-class dra composition

Week 13 Revised in-class composition

Week 14 Second grammar instrument or posttest

Week 16 Students receive feedback on the grammar instrument

Source: Author's original work

Analysis of the results

As mentioned before, students (n=25) took the pretest without

being informed about the target grammatical form. is was the

rst non-graded test they took on-campus, as they had taken

virtual courses for the past two years and a half. is diagnostic

instrument was tabulated to assess students’ prior knowledge of

the passive voice. Also, it was valuable to observe if they knew the

past participles of irregular verbs. e posttest includes the same 21

items, which are divided into four exercises: sentence production,

sentence completion, sentence formation, and question formation.

Table 3 shows the results of both instruments as well as learners’

improvement at the end of the course.

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Type if item Pretest Posttest Level of

improvement

correct wrong correct wrong

1. Sentence production 10 15 19 6 +

2. Sentence production 3 22 18 7 +15

3. Sentence production 5 20 19 6 +14

4. Sentence production 4 21 20 5 +16

5. Sentence production 9 16 21 4 +12

6. Sentence production 5 20 17 8 +12

7. Sentence completion 12 13 17 8 +5

8. Sentence completion 11 14 21 4 +10

9. Sentence completion 12 13 20 5 +8

10. Sentence completion 3 22 12 13 +9

11. Sentence completion 5 20 16 9 +15

12. Sentence formation 2 23 16 9 +14

13. Sentence formation 17 8 22 3 +5

14. Sentence formation 15 10 16 9 +1

15. Sentence formation 7 18 10 15 +3

16. Sentence formation 11 14 10 15 -1

17. Question formation 3 22 15 10 +12

18. Question formation 2 23 14 11 +12

19. Question formation 0 25 10 15 +10

20. Question formation 5 20 13 12 +8

21. Question formation 6 19 13 12 +7

Source: Author's original work

T :

S        

Certainly, the rst exercise, sentence production, represents

a higher cognitive level in terms of structure, vocabulary, and

sentence formation. In this case, students were given a concise

and clear picture and a prompt question to guide the inductive use

of the passive voice (e.g., What will happen to the environment if

these forests disappear? Or What is going to happen to the owner’s

data of this hacked computer equipment?). In this case, an answer

was considered wrong if the passive construction was not accurate;

so, misspelling of past participles, wrong vocabulary usage, or

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punctuation mistakes were not considered. In this case, the correct

answers of the pretest reached only 24%. At the end of the course,

there was 76% of correct answers. e resulting sentences from

posttest had a higher level of construction and correctness.

Based on the categories mentioned before, the resulting

sentences are classied as full passives (including the agent),

truncated passive sentences, and, to a lesser extent, stative passives.

In some cases, students used past participles that were not part

of the ocial list of the textbooks. Some examples of accurate

sentences taken from the posttest are:

• e message is being delivered by a carrier pigeon.

• Someone is going to be given a marriage proposal.

• Deforestation will be spread all over the planet.

• e thief is going to be taken to jail.

• She got bad advice.

• It got stolen.

e second exercise, sentence completion, aimed at assessing

passive verb forms based on the context of a passage. Its topic

was related to one of the themes of the textbooks: architecture.

According to the instructions, students had to carefully observe

context clues to determine the verb tense forms that best complete

the following text:

One of the most famous buildings is known as the Dancing

House. Its peculiar shape was designed by the Croatian-

Czech architect Vlado Milunic. Originally, a very old

house occupied the place where this building is, but sadly

this 19th century house was destroyed during a bombing

in 1945. e remaining space was small but sucient for

a modern building. Because a Dutch insurance company

supported the construction, the project was given unlimited

budget by this bank. As this iconic design was unusual, the

building received constant criticism, but it was opened in

1996 by its owners, two years aer the construction started.

(Information taken from Google)

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us, this is a discrete-based exercise in which students only

focus on verb forms. To increase the level of complexity and assess

students’ recognition of a possible verb to conjugate, the passage

does not contain any target verb as a hint. Once again, minor

spelling mistakes were not considered (e.g., stopped - stoped), but

accuracy or logical meaning (e.g., was destroyed during a bombing

– was opened during a bombing) were graded. us, 34.4% of the

answers of the pretest were correct, but the posttest showed an

increase of 68,8% of correct answers in this second exercise.

e purpose of the third exercise is to observe if learners

were able to construct sentences based on a list of scrambled

words and a verb in its simple form. To guide students, a time

phrase was also included to mark the verb tense. Although most

students identied the subject and the agent of the sentence, others

did not distinguish the doer of the action and the subject of the

passive construction. Some resulting sentences in the pretest were

incorrectly written as the reversible form was not possible; others

contain incorrect verb forms or misspelling mistakes:

a. e intense ood was destroyed by the three houses so far. [sic]

b. e Anglo-Saxons was begun the celebration of Halloween

long ago. [sic]

c. Yesterday was founded the side of the road by a vehicle. [sic]

d. Two physicians will be operate on by the patient at this

moment. [sic]

e. Tomorrow, Star Wars posters are going to be cover with the

walls. [sic]

In this exercise, 41,6% of the answers were correct (pretest);

at the end of the course, 59,2% of the resulting sentences were

correct. is was the item with the lowest level of improvement

(17,6%), but it is a true that students must take several steps to

come up with a correct, meaningful sentence in its passive voice.

e level of diculty of this exercise is considerably higher.

Finally, the last exercise assessed students’ ability to write a

complete Yes/No or Wh question (e.g., Who was e DaVinci

Code written by? or where was the mysterious man seen last night?)

based on the underlined segment of a sentence (e.g., e concert

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T 

N      

was cancelled because the singer was sick.). Writing questions is a

challenging task, especially in the passive form. Although passive

questions are less frequently used in the oral or written mode, it

is important to study them in this course. In the pretest, 12,8% of

the questions were correct, and the posttest had 52% of correct

questions in the passive voice.

Apart from using passive constructions in the pretest and

posttest, students had to produce an academic composition in

its dra and nal version. roughout the course, the instructor

explained the writing conventions (mechanics, sentence errors,

content, lexicon, organization, among others) related to the

themes of the coursebook. en, students started the writing

process of producing a composition, whose topic includes prompts

to incorporate the passive voice as well as other grammar forms.

Aer revising this rst dra, and two weeks later, students wrote

the edited, nal version of the composition. e instructor counted

all the passive constructions. Table 4 summarizes the number of

correct and incorrect sentences with the target form:

Dra Composition 1 Final Version

Correct

sentences

Incorrect

sentences

Correct

sentences

Correct

sentences

39 9 52 3

Source: Author's original work

In this case, the group performance shows a dierence of seven

sentences; however, it is important to clarify that, if a composition

is limited in terms of content, the writer has the opportunity to add

a few sentences to meet the desired number of ideas. ere is some

evidence of improvement in terms of error correction. Students

had only one hour to write both versions of their academic

composition.

Discussion of the Results

e analysis of the ndings showed that students had studied

the passive voice during secondary school; however, this is not the

case of the previous course, LM-1001 Integrated English I, as this

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grammar rule is not part of the course syllabus. In this second-

year course, some were not able to recognize non-reversible forms.

In addition, it was a must to make a review of most verb forms,

especially because the previous course does not include the past

perfect, the present perfect or the present perfect progressive. Also,

there was a need of producing original and additional materials to

teach the passive form, in this case, inductively.

Most students were interested in discovering the various

aspects behind this rule, which were later incorporated into their

academic compositions. In subsequent lessons, modal auxiliaries

may be incorporated to complement content (e.g., e patient

must be taken to a physician). As opposed to the pretest, some

resulting sentences in the posttest were correctly written and

evidenced a higher level of construction. ese are some of the

students’ sentences:

a. e sculptures were designed by the well-known artist Jorge

Jiménez Deredia.

b. e research on snakes was conducted by Clodomiro Picado in

Costa Rica.

c. e injured patient was successfully operated on at HSJD.

d. is invention, which was acknowledged by other scientists,

simplied the lives of many people all over the world.

e. e computer system was hacked by foreign terrorists; this

became a new challenge to investigators.

In relation to both academic compositions, the second version

of the paragraph is not just a repetition of the previous one. On

the contrary, based on feedback from the instructor, students

have a chance to expand on content, correct syntactic errors, and

join or separate ideas. us, at the moment of revising the new

version, the instructor has to check how students deal with error

correction, which makes this process more time-consuming.

However, in general, students made a signicant improvement

in all the aspects established in the evaluation rubric: content,

vocabulary, organization, structure, spelling, mechanics.

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Sample TBL Lesson

To illustrate the production of TBL materials for such course,

this brief section will present a series of activities to teach the

passive voice at an intermediate level. e following sample lesson

is aimed at presenting the English passive voice, whose outcome

will be for students to write an academic composition. is lesson

exemplies meaning-focused activities at a primary level; then,

the lesson will also illustrate form-focused activities.

Aer this warm-up activity has been checked, the instructor

will present a vocabulary-building exercise to prepare learners for

a short reading text. is short exercise contains academic lexicon,

which is a necessary component in such course. Coxhead (2006)

points out that “if learners are not able to recognize or use this

language, this can act as a kind of barrier or lexical bar to higher

learning” (p.3). So, the following sample activity, proposed by

Coxhead (2006, p.37), consists of building students’ background

knowledge by matching some inventions with some parts of

learners’ lives (the boldfaced words belong to the Academic Word

List or AWL).

T :

S W- A

Instructions. Here are some statements about inventions and

innovations. Individually, read each statement and give each one a

mark of 1 to 4, according to the following scale:

1=strongly agree 2=agree 3=disagree 4=strongly disagree

a. An innovation is the same as an invention.

b. e wheel is by far the greatest invention of all time.

c. omas Edison was the most important inventor.

d. A successful invention must be protable.

en, compare your answers with your team members. Justify your

answers.

Source: Contextualized activity adapted from Dave Willis and Jane Willis (2007)

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Instructions: Read the text silently. en, in pairs, ask your

classmate about the piece of information that you need to

complete your text. Ask complete questions.

T :

S A   '  

e word crucial is an academic word meaning very important.

Read the list inventions and the list of eects on people's lives.

Which three items in both lists do you believe to be crucial for your

lives and why? Give some reasons.

1. Paper currency

2. Paper

3. Refrigerator

4. Microscope

5.Printing Press

6. Calculator

7. Antibiotics

8. Pasteurization

To purchase goods and services

To spread knowledge

To analyze and observe items

To publish books

To undergo medical treatment

To quantify the size or amount of something

To compute an answer or an amount

To prevent food from decaying

Source: Activity adapted from Coxhead, 2006, p.37

e central activity from this Task Cycle is an information-gap

activity. In this case, students work in pairs and negotiate meaning

to ll the gaps. e text contains various sentences in the passive

voice. is meaning-focused activity helps learners observe

inductively the use and purpose of the passive voice.

T :

S - 

e printing press is a machine

by which text and images are

transferred to paper by means of

ink. Movable types and paper were

invented in _________. e oldest

book was created in Korea in the

century. In Europe, a wooden,

mechanized printing press was

created by __________. He is well-

known for reproducing the Bible

in 1455. e edition was printed

by Gutenberg and____________

with the use movable types. At the

e printing press is a machine

by which text and _________ are

transferred to paper by means

of ink. Movable types and paper

were invented in China. e oldest

book was created in Korea in the

___________. In Europe, a wooden,

mechanized printing press was created

by Johannes Gutenberg. He is well-

known for reproducing the ________

in 1455. e edition was printed by

Gutenberg and his associates with the

use _____________. At the beginning

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beginning this was a time-consuming

process, but later,_________ sheets

were printed on one side per hour. In

the 18

century, metal presses were

used, which combined a cylinder and

____________.

this was a time-consuming process,

but later, 250 sheets were printed

on one side per hour. In the 18

century, ____________ were used,

hich combined a cylinder and the

implementation of steam.

Source: Text taken and adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (2022)

It is worth mentioning that students use language in order

to negotiate meaning to complete this passage. ey may take

advantage of communication strategies (e.g., What do you mean

by this word? Can you say it again?) and question formation to

carry out the task. e instructor is a facilitator and does not

interfere while students try to ll the gaps. If necessary, he or she

may explain the meaning of a new word.

e next step is called planning. In sum, students have to

report to the class on their ndings. In other words, they are

asked to explain orally how they solved the gaps. At this point,

the instructor may correct mistakes and provide positive feedback.

e part of the cycle ends with the report. With a group of twenty-

four students, approximately, it is important to check the correct

answers of the information-gap task. A few volunteers may read

aloud the passage and clarify answers. As an optional follow-up

activity, the instructor may read the passage out loud, emphasizing

passive constructions and the correct pronunciation of -ed

endings. Aer this part, students are ready to carry out the form-

focused activities.

e focus-on-form section consists of three parts: analysis,

practice, and follow-up. As Willis and Willis (cited in Carter

and Nunan, 2001) indicate, “in task-based approaches, therefore,

language development is prompted by language use, with the

study of language form playing a secondary role” (p.174).

However, during this part of the lesson, students get acquainted

with the intricacies of language form by observing how a grammar

structure is consistently used in various sentences. e instructor

does not explain rules explicitly; students have to explore and

discovery how this new construction is used. e following True

and False activity consists of a series of contextualized sentences.

Each sentence contains the passive voice, and students, in pairs,

have to say if its content is correct or incorrect. ey do so orally.

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T :

T  F 

Instructions. In pairs, read the following sentences about in-

ventions. decide if they are true or false. Explain why you think

some sentences are wrong and correct the false information. Pay

attention to the boldfaced words.

Talking about Inventions

a. In 1455, the Bible was printed by Alexander Graham Bell as

his associates.

b. Stone tools were created more than 2000 years ago by Homo

habilis, an early human ancester.

c. e rst saxophone was patented by Antoine -Joseph Sax in

Paris in 1846.

d. e cylinder phonograph by invented by omas Alva

Edison

e. Apple II personal computer was designed by Bill Gates in

1977.

Source: Sentences taken and adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (2022)

e second activity is a consciousness-raising exercise. In this

case, students take a closer look at the meaning, form, and use of

the passive voice. As mentioned before, the instructor facilitates

the recognition of a given grammar form. Folse (2016) suggests

instructors to use a mnemonic device to help students write the

passive verb form correctly; in other words, “a helpful hint is to

count the number of verb parts in the active sentence and then add

one” (p.383). e instructor can use the same sample sentences

from the True and False activity to exemplify how passive

constructions contain an additional word in regard to verb forms:

• Letitia Geer invented (1) the medical syringe.

• e medical syringe was invented (2) by Letitia Geer.

• Pharmaceutical companies are going to do (4) new research

on respiratory illnesses.

• New research on respiratory illnesses is going to be done (5)

by pharmaceutical companies.

us, this is a detail that students can reect on during the

analysis component of the TBL framework. Consider the exercise

below:

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T :

S - 

Instructions. Read the following two sets of statements. In pairs,

answer the question below.

Set A

• In 1455, the Bible was printed by

Johanes Gutenberg as his associates.

• Stone tools were created more than

2 million years ago by Homo habilis,

an early human ancestor.

• Computers are used all over the

world.

Set B

• Johannes Gutenberg and his

associates printed the bible in 1455.

• Homo habilis, an early human

ancestor, created stone tools more

tahn 2 million years ago.

Reect on the answers to these questions:

1. Which set of sentences best expresses the main ideas? Why?

2. Read the boldfaced words. When is [was/were + verb] used?

3. What is the purpose of the underlined phrases?

4. Find a sentence that has no doer of action.

Why does it lack a doer or explicit agent?

5. Focus on both verb forms and count those words.

Do you notice any dierence?

6. When should we use the passive voice?

Source: Sentences taken and adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica (2022)

T :

E  

Instructions. Read the newspaper headlines below. In pairs,

decide which set requires the active voice or the passive voice.

en, edit the headlines to correct its structure. ere is ONE

headline that does not require any correction.

SET A

Costa Rican WhatsApp Numbers

Published on Dark Web

SET B

Covid aid beneted mostly large

companies in developing countries.

More than 900 Coral Reefs Restored

in Costa Rica in 2022

Tamarindo Art Wave to showcase

local, national and international

artists.

Source: Original headlines taken from e Tico Times (2022)

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CÉSAR ALBERTO NAVAS BRENES | Teaching and Assessing

ese activities form the basis of the next step: practice.

Traditionally, learners are asked to rewrite active sentences in the

passive form. A more appealing activity is to unscramble segments

of sentences (e.g., sleeps of paper) so that students come up with

either active or passive sentences. In a virtual course, several

tools allow instructors to design the same exercise in order to

click, drag, and drop words to form sentences. Feedback can be

given immediately. Also, with the purpose of choosing the correct

verb tense in the passive voice, students may complete partially

erased sentences, which must include time phrases to guide the

answers. Finally, the last component of this lesson is called follow-

up. A sample activity may integrate listening comprehension and

grammar. To achieve so, the instructor can read out loud the

description of an invention. As he or she reads, students are only

asked to count the sentences that include passive constructions.

Conclusion and recommendations

To nish the presentation of this TBL work, it is essential to

indicate that tasks should have a sense of authenticity; this means

“to correspond to some real-world activity” (Ellis, 2003, p.6).

So, this work seeks an integration of inductive grammar and

explicit writing instruction (e.g., students will write two academic

compositions to describe an invention and its benets to their

lives). Similarly, at the workplace, students will be more likely to

write reports or short texts with a very similar objective. Nunan

(2005, p.46) also advises teachers to “keep the learning load

manageable” while working with beginners.

is case study responded to the need of complementing

commercialized materials to teach the passive voice. is had to

be done as the course textbook lacked detailed explanations and

further practice. Also, in terms of the TBL framework, instructors

may distribute content and activities in several lessons, including

computer-lab sessions or virtual lessons. With larger groups, one

should assess if this active methodology is feasible. Materials must

be contextualized according to the themes of ocial textbooks

and their chapters, especially if students’ written outcome is an

academic composition (dra and edited version). At the end,

to implement TBL as an active methodology will certainly vary

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traditional, form-focused explanations and, as a result, make

English lessons more appealing and challenging.

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