🎚️ Horizon: Voice for Effect
Two texts about the same flooded gym open the editing room: a cool passive notice and a lively active blog post — and both are perfect, for different readers. Learners collect the editor’s reason cards (FOCUS, UNKNOWN, FORMAL, RESPONSIBILITY), rewrite lines in both directions with stated reasons, unmask the famous hiding passive “Mistakes were made”, slide sentences along the formality dial, and defend every voice choice in choice-defence rounds.
NEW🔒 PRO
Lesson Plan
- Which version would Sam prefer?
- A notice vs a friend’s message
- Telling the head teacher and your best friend
Key Vocabulary
Grammar Points
- The passive foregrounds the receiver: choose it when the doer is unknown, obvious or less important than the action (My bike was stolen)
- An agentless passive can conceal responsibility (“Mistakes were made”) — name the doer in the active when accountability matters
- Register pairing: formal notices and reports prefer the impersonal passive (Applications must be submitted); conversation and narrative prefer the active
- The optional by-phrase reintroduces the doer only when that information earns its place (It was discovered by Fleming — only if Fleming is the point)
