Question

Change the following sentence to Passive Voice.

The teacher had punished the boys. [Intermediate]

• A. The boys had been punished by the teacher.
• B. The boys were punished by the teacher.
• C. The boys were being punished by the teacher.
• D. The teacher had been punishing the boys.

Answer 1

The correct option is A The boys had been punished by the teacher.

When an active voice sentence has to be changed to a passive voice sentence, care should be taken to identify the tense of the active sentence first. The sentence given here is a past perfect tense one because the word 'had' is used.

From the given options, option C) and D) are both in past continuous form and can be clearly eliminated.

Between options A) and B), both seem to be correct but the tense of the sentence gives the clue to the answer. The word 'were' indicates the simple past tense and so is incorrect to use here. So, the correct answer is option A) the boys had been punished by the teacher.