Understanding Passive Voice Transformation

The task is to convert the active voice sentence "The doctor prescribed the medicine" into its correct passive voice form. Let's break down how this transformation works.

Active vs. Passive Voice

An active voice sentence emphasizes the subject performing the action. A passive voice sentence emphasizes the object receiving the action.

Analyzing the Original Sentence

The given sentence is:

"The doctor prescribed the medicine."

• Subject: The doctor
• Verb: prescribed (Simple Past Tense)
• Object: the medicine

Steps for Active to Passive Conversion (Simple Past)

To change a sentence from active to passive voice in the simple past tense, follow these steps:

1. Make the object of the active sentence the subject of the passive sentence.
2. Use the appropriate form of the verb "to be" in the simple past tense (was or were) followed by the past participle of the main verb.
3. Add the preposition "by" followed by the subject of the active sentence (now the agent).

Applying the Steps

1. The object "the medicine" becomes the new subject.
2. The verb "prescribed" is in the simple past. The past participle is also "prescribed". Since "the medicine" is singular, we use "was". So, the verb form becomes "was prescribed".
3. The original subject "The doctor" becomes the agent, introduced by "by". So, it becomes "by the doctor".

Putting it all together, the passive sentence is: "The medicine was prescribed by the doctor."

Evaluating the Options

• Option 1: "The medicine is prescribed." - This uses the present simple passive ("is prescribed"), which is incorrect as the original sentence is in the past tense.
• Option 2: "The medicine has been prescribed." - This uses the present perfect passive ("has been prescribed"), which changes the tense and is not the direct passive form of the simple past sentence.
• Option 3: "The medicine had been prescribing." - This option uses the past perfect continuous passive tense and incorrectly uses the present participle "prescribing" instead of the past participle "prescribed". It's grammatically incorrect and doesn't match the original tense.
• Option 4: "The medicine was prescribed by the doctor." - This correctly follows the rules for converting a simple past active sentence to passive voice. It uses "was prescribed" (simple past passive) and includes the agent "by the doctor".