Learn English – Passive voice for sentences using modals and “used to:

grammaticalitypassive-voice

I always have some problems with changing an active sentence which contains used to into a passive sentence, for example:

Mr Green used to teach languages at school.

What is the passive form? Is it

Languages were used to be taught at school.

or is it

Languages used to be taught at school.

Best Answer

You could begin by replacing the "used to" by "once" or "formerly" so your active sentence (past tense) becomes

Mr Green once taught languages at school.

The passive form will then be

Languages were once taught at school by Mr Green.

Note it would be more usual to be more specific about where the languages were taught (since languages now forms the focus of the sentence.

Languages were once taught at this school by Mr Green.

If you really want to retain the "used to" form, then you can replace "were once" with "used to be" giving

Languages used to be taught at this school by Mr Green.

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