📰 Grammar B2-23: Impersonal passive

The B2 material for reporting a claim while refusing to name who made it — the structure journalism, science, rumour and cautious officialdom all run on. It opens by naming the job rather than the form: a newsroom knows what is alleged but cannot yet say who alleges it, and English has one frame built to put the claim on the page and delete its author. From the single rumour People say that she lives in Vienna the material builds both shapes side by side in the flagship compare and verdict: the it shape, It is said that she lives in Vienna, where the dummy subject holds the slot and the clause survives with its own subject and finite verb, and the subject-raised shape, She is said to live in Vienna, where the person moves to the front and what is left behind becomes an infinitive. Both are correct; the second is shorter, changes what the sentence is about, and is what the Cambridge B2 First transformation task rewards. The machinery then gets a formula, a six-row mapping table and two worked runs, because the tense mapping is the hard part: a claim set at the moment of the report takes the plain infinitive, is said to lie, while an earlier claim takes the perfect one, is believed to have buried, with to be living and to have been living covering the progressive cases. Section five isolates that decision as two independent clocks — the reporting verb records when the report was made, the infinitive records where the claim sits — and drills the overcorrection nobody warns about, was believed to run against is believed to have run. A nine-verb table sorts say, believe, think, know, report, expect, claim, allege and consider by how much the writer will stand behind the claim, adds rumour and understand, and notes that consider alone may drop its to be: she is considered the finest restorer. A 150-word newspaper feature on the disputed Vellheim hoard carries eight tappable choices. Practice runs to thirty explained multiple-choice items in four sets, twelve claims sorted by which infinitive they need, six reveal cards, six repairs and four traps built against the crossed shapes, the finite verb after to, the missing dummy it and the misread clock. Teacher notes give a 45-minute sequence, the two-arrow board move, the paper-strip rescue and B2 First relevance.