TENSE TUESDAY: ACTIVE vs. PASSIVE PRESENT CONTINUOUS

Hello, everyone! I hope that you had a nice weekend and for those of you who didn't work yesterday, I hope you had a wonderful holiday. 

For today's Tense Tuesday, we are comparing the ACTIVE and PASSIVE forms of the Present Continuous. Here are their forms. 

ACTIVE: is/am/are -ING

PASSIVE: is/am/are being past participle (by agent)

We use the ACTIVE Present Continuous for many things, including actions happening right now. We use the PASSIVE Present Continuous for the same thing, but the emphasis is different. 

Example 1: Tim is washing the car. 

Example 2: The car is being washed (by Tim). 

In the first example, Tim is important. The emphasis is on Tim and Tim's action. In the second example, the emphasis is on the car and the fact that the car is being washed. Tim is not as important (sorry, Tim). 

Let's look at two more examples. 

Example 3: The committee is preparing the documents. 

Example 4: The documents are being prepared (by the committee). 

Again, the committee is emphasized in Example 3, while the documents and the process of writing them is emphasized in Example 4. In the passive examples above, the agent is optional. We could say simply "The documents are being prepared."

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!