Active Voice Conversion: Understanding Sentence Transformation

What is Active and Passive Voice?

In English grammar, sentences can be structured in two main ways: active voice and passive voice.

• Active Voice: The subject of the sentence performs the action. The structure is typically Subject + Verb + Object. Example: "The dog chased the ball." (The dog is doing the chasing).
• Passive Voice: The subject of the sentence receives the action. The structure often involves a form of "to be" + past participle, and the doer of the action might be mentioned in a "by" phrase or omitted. Example: "The ball was chased by the dog." (The ball is receiving the action).

Analyzing the Given Passive Sentence

The original sentence is: "Admission was refused to Sheetal by the school."

Let's break it down:

• Subject (receiving action): Admission
• Verb (passive): was refused (Past Simple Passive)
• Doer of the action (agent): the school (indicated by "by")
• Recipient: Sheetal

This sentence is in the Past Simple Passive tense because it uses the past tense of "to be" (was) plus the past participle (refused), and the focus is on 'Admission' which received the action.

Converting Passive to Active Voice

To change a passive sentence to its active form, follow these steps:

1. Identify the doer (agent) in the passive sentence. In our sentence, the doer is "the school". This will become the subject of the active sentence.
2. Change the passive verb to its active form, keeping the same tense. The passive verb is "was refused" (Past Simple Passive). The active form in the Past Simple tense is "refused".
3. Make the subject of the passive sentence ("Admission") the direct object of the active sentence.
4. Include any other necessary parts of the sentence, like "to Sheetal".

Applying these steps, we get:

Subject (Doer): The school

Active Verb (Past Simple): refused

Direct Object: admission

Recipient: to Sheetal

Combining these gives the active sentence: "The school refused admission to Sheetal."

Evaluating the Options

Now let's look at the provided options:

• Option 1: "The school refused admission to Sheetal."

  This sentence has "The school" as the subject performing the action "refused". It uses the past simple active verb form. This matches our derived active sentence.

• Option 2: "The school has been refusing admission to Sheetal."

  This is in the Present Perfect Continuous tense, which is different from the original sentence's tense (Past Simple).

• Option 3: "Sheetal will be refused admission by the school."

  This sentence is still in the passive voice (Future Simple Passive).

• Option 4: "Sheetal was refused admission by the school."

  This sentence is also in the passive voice (Past Simple Passive), identical in voice and tense to the original sentence.

Conclusion

The correct active form of the sentence "Admission was refused to Sheetal by the school" is the one where the doer ("the school") performs the action ("refused") in the past simple tense.