When we want to change a statement from active to passive, in the present continuous, we have to change the verb that is continuous from the active verb to the continuous for of be and the past participle of the active verb.
E.g. if we start with is painting then we have to change it to is being painted by.
However I'm not sure how to change the subject and the object. If we start with:
John is painting his room.
Is the passive construction:
His room is being painted by John.
Something seems wrong when comparing the two sentences, but I'm not sure what. Does his in the passive construction refer to the same person as in the active?
Best Answer
There is nothing grammatically incorrect about
However it doesn't carry the exact same meaning as
The first (passive) means that John is painting someone else's room, where as the second (active) could mean that, but it's more likely that it means that John is painting his own room.
You clearly know how to form the passive, but the change that needs to take place is that you need to make sure the same person is doing the same thing to the same object as in the active.
If we assume the room in "John is painting his room" to be John's room, which is most likely without further context, then to turn it to a passive construction you need to start by specifying whose room it is: John's room.
Next you make the action of painting passive, which you did correctly: is being painted.
Finally you specify who is doing the painting: by him.
The last part (by him) can cause the inverse ambiguity of the original (active) sentence, i.e. we assume the him refers to John but it could refer to someone else. To completely remove the ambiguity you could change the last bit:
But usually the given context removes ambiguity.