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Tenses and Voice

Part of the LAT (Law Admission Test) study roadmap. English topic eng-6 of English.

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Tenses and Voice

🟢 Lite — Quick Review (1h–1d)

Rapid summary for last-minute revision before your LAT English MCQs.

Tenses mark the time of a verb’s action across three times (Present, Past, Future) and four aspects (Simple, Continuous, Perfect, Perfect Continuous), giving 12 tense forms. Voice shows whether the subject performs the action (Active Voice) or receives it (Passive Voice). For LAT, four question types dominate: fill-in-the-blank tense, sentence correction, active↔passive conversion, and identifying passive constructions in comprehension passages.

  • 12 tenses = 3 times × 4 aspects (Simple, Continuous, Perfect, Perfect Continuous).
  • Active: Subject + V1 (+ Object) → “The advocate filed the petition.”
  • Passive: Object + be + V3 (+ by Agent) → “The petition was filed by the advocate.”
  • Stative verbs (know, own, believe) reject continuous forms — a frequent LAT trap.
  • Passive requires a transitive verb — intransitive verbs (happen, occur) cannot be passivised.

🟡 Standard — Regular Study (2d–2mo)

Standard content for students with a few days to months.

The 12-Tense Framework

Every English verb sits on two axes: TIME (present, past, future) and ASPECT (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous). Aspect determines whether the action is a habit, ongoing, completed, or ongoing-until-completed. Continuous uses be + V-ing; perfect uses have + V3; perfect continuous combines have + been + V-ing.

Active vs Passive Structure

Active voice keeps the doer as the subject. Passive voice promotes the old object to subject position, assisted by a form of be plus the past participle (V3). Only transitive verbs (those taking a direct object) can be passivised. The agent — the doer — is introduced by by and is optional when the doer is obvious, unknown, or irrelevant.

Active-to-Passive Conversion Rules

Tense (Active)Passive Form
Simple Presentis/am/are + V3
Present Continuousis/am/are + being + V3
Simple Pastwas/were + V3
Present Perfecthas/have + been + V3
Future (will)will + be + V3
Modal (can/should/must)modal + be + V3

Exam Patterns and Common Traps

  • Sequence of tenses in reported speech: present back-shifts to past, past to past perfect, unless reporting a permanent truth.
  • Stative verbs (know, own, resemble, believe) never take -ing.
  • Imperative passive: Let + object + be + V3 — “Let the witness be cross-examined.”
  • Tense consistency inside one paragraph; LAT passages often test an unjustified shift from past to present.

🔴 Extended — Deep Study (3mo+)

Comprehensive coverage for students on a longer study timeline.

Edge Cases in Passive Transformation

Not every be + V3 string is a true passive. The construction “He was amused” contains a past participle acting as an adjective, not a passive verb — no agent can be inserted, and no action was performed on him by an external doer. LAT examiners exploit this by pairing adjectives with true passives in sentence-correction items. Similarly, linking verbs (seem, become, remain) followed by V3 are adjectival, not passive.

Forms That Frequently Mislead Candidates

  • Infinitive passive: to be + V3 → “The judge wants the evidence to be presented.”
  • Gerund passive: being + V3 → “He objected to being interrogated.”
  • Causative passive: have + Object + V3 → “She had the affidavit notarised.”
  • Future-perfect passive: will + have + been + V3 → “The verdict will have been delivered by noon.”

Pakistani legal drafting is overwhelmingly passive because the actor is often the system rather than a person: “The accused was acquitted,” “Notice is hereby issued,” “The statute was amended in 2020.” Recognising this register speeds up LAT comprehension reading, where roughly 60–70% of judicial sentences are passive. Mastering the transformation rules also lets you rephrase confusing active judges into clean passive legal forms.

Practice Prompts

  1. Convert to passive, keeping the tense: “The High Court has dismissed the appeal.” → The appeal has been dismissed by the High Court.
  2. Spot the error: “The accident was happened on the motorway.” → Happen is intransitive; no passive exists. Rewrite as “The accident happened on the motorway.”

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