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Question

Difficulty: MediumActive and Passive Voice Transformation

Read the active sentence below and complete its passive transformation. What is the correct passive verb phrase to fill in the blank?

Answer:Active: The panel of inquiry was looking into the financial irregularities.
Passive: The financial irregularities 【were being looked into】 by the panel of inquiry.

Answer

were being looked into
The active sentence is in the past continuous tense with a prepositional verb phrase ('was looking into'). When converting to passive, the plural subject ('financial irregularities') takes the plural auxiliary 'were', followed by continuous marker 'being', the past participle 'looked', and the required particle 'into'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the tense and aspect of the active sentence verb phrase.
The active verb 'was looking into' is in the past continuous tense and contains the preposition 'into'.
Passive conversion must strictly preserve original tense, continuous aspect, and attached preposition.
2
Determine subject-verb agreement for the new subject in the passive sentence.
The object 'the financial irregularities' becomes the new plural subject, requiring the plural auxiliary 'were'.
Plural noun subjects demand plural auxiliary verbs.
3
Construct the passive continuous verb phrase.
Past continuous passive formula is 'was/were' + 'being' + past participle + preposition ('were being looked into').
Combining 'were being' with 'looked into' forms the correct passive construction.

Key Concept

Active and Passive Voice Transformation
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Topics

Active and Passive Voice Transformation

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