Transforming Active to Passive Voice: 'Cooking Up Stories'

The original sentence is in the active voice: "She is cooking up stories so that she can escape punishment." Our goal is to convert this into the passive voice, focusing on changing the sentence structure while maintaining the original meaning and tense.

Understanding the Tenses

The main clause of the sentence, "She is cooking up stories," is in the **Present Continuous Tense** (Subject + is/am/are + verb-ing). The second clause, "so that she can escape punishment," uses a modal verb ('can').

Active to Passive Conversion Rules

To convert a sentence from active to passive voice, we follow these general steps:

• The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence.
• The main verb is changed to its past participle form.
• An appropriate form of the auxiliary verb 'to be' is added before the past participle, matching the original tense and the new subject.
• The subject of the active sentence becomes the object of the preposition 'by' (or is omitted if unimportant).

Converting the Main Clause

Let's apply these rules to the main clause:

• Active Clause: "She is cooking up stories"
• Subject: She
• Verb Phrase: is cooking up (Present Continuous)
• Object: stories

For the Present Continuous Tense, the passive structure is: Object + is/am/are + being + past participle + (by Subject).

• Applying this: "Stories" (new subject) + "are" (matches 'stories') + "being" + "cooked up" (past participle of 'cook up') + "by her" (original subject).
• Result: "Stories are being cooked up by her."

Converting the Subordinate Clause

The clause "so that she can escape punishment" also needs to be considered for passive voice.

• Active Clause: "she can escape punishment"
• Subject: she
• Modal Verb Phrase: can escape
• Object: punishment

For modal verbs (like 'can', 'could', 'will', 'would', etc.), the passive structure is: Object + modal verb + be + past participle + (by Subject).

• Applying this: "punishment" (new subject) + "can" + "be" + "escaped" (past participle of 'escape') + "by her" (original subject, often omitted when implied or general).
• Result: "so that punishment can be escaped."

Combining the Clauses

Putting the converted clauses together gives us: "Stories are being cooked up by her so that punishment can be escaped."

Evaluating the Options

1. "Stories are cooked up by her so that punishment can be escaped." - Incorrect. This uses the simple present passive ("are cooked up"), not the present continuous passive required by the original sentence ("is cooking up").
2. "Stories were cooked up by her so that punishment could be escaped." - Incorrect. This uses the simple past passive ("were cooked up") and changes the modal tense ("could"), which doesn't match the original sentence.
3. "Stories are being cooked up by her so that punishment can be escaped." - Correct. This option correctly uses the present continuous passive structure ("are being cooked up") for the main clause and the appropriate passive form ("punishment can be escaped") for the subordinate clause, maintaining the original meaning and tense.
4. "Stories have been cooked up by her so that punishment can be escaped." - Incorrect. This uses the present perfect passive ("have been cooked up"), which is a different tense from the original present continuous.

Therefore, the correct passive form accurately reflects the original sentence's present continuous tense and the meaning of both clauses.