Passive & Active Adjectives
Also known as Participle Adjectives, these include (1) Adjectives that end with ‘-ed’, which show how the modified noun is affected by an action or state; and (2) Adjectives that end with ‘-ing’, which show how the modified noun causes an action or state.
What to Expect
These are adjectives that end with -ed/-en or with -ing. Without those suffixes, the words are verbs. In fact, it’s helpful to consider both of the adjectives and their related verb together in terms of how they affect or are caused by the noun those adjectives modify.
Students should have seen some of these adjectives before, so this topics is not entirely new. But now we’re focusing on creating those adjectives and seeing how they relate to each other and to their base verb.
Prerequisites
Learners should already be familiar with the following:
Parts of Speech, namely nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
- Nouns are people, places, things, ideas, and activities.
- Adjectives are words that describe or specify nouns.
- Verbs are actions or states.
Cause and Effect is applied to more than just grammar, of course. Actions and states happen because of causes, and effects happen because of actions or states.
Active vs. Passive (similar to cause vs. effect)
The Passive Participle Form, which Insights refers to as ‘V3’. Regular verbs add ‘-ed’ to the end to create the past participle form. Irregular verbs have ‘-en’ endings or different changes. Students should have learned this form – also called the Perfect Participle form – when they studied Perfect tenses.
The video refers to the Perfect Participle form as used in perfect tenses, so you may want to visit the Present Perfect page as well.
Proficiency Level
Students at a B1 level should be familiar with Passive & Active Adjectives. This topic is often introduced at Intermediate level (or 4th out of 6).*
*actual starting level varies from one course-book series to the next
Passive Adjectives
end with -ed/-en
show how the noun is
affected by an action
Active Adjectives
end with -ing
show how the noun
causes an action
Bonus Notes
Practice Activity
Teaching Tips
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