How can I change " I was going to the garden" in passive voice.

Question

How can I change " I was going to the garden" in passive voice.

Answer 1

The garden was being gone to by me.

Answer 2

I wonder if you actually wanted to have passive voice or had something else in mind? As a language problem to solve or answer for a test, I understand the need to use passive voice to answer a specific test question. If you were actually seeking a different way to express the sentence to keep the tenses in your text consistent, then perhaps you could include more text her for us to read? 

 

My first hunch upon reading your sentence was that you were looking to rewrite the sentence with a different feel to it, and I thought of this:

 

"As I was going to the garden..."

 

So many times, "teachy" answers to a student request can get bogged down in technical jargon or just plain clogged up with words, when a simple answer will do to clarify for the student. I am a writer, and my copy editors come down hard on me when I am not simple, clear, and concise in my columns and reporting. So I opt for simple and direct text. I don't tend to use the passive tense in my work... so the passive tense is not frequently used by me for writing.. heheh.

Answer 3

I would consider the responses of both Jason Robert and Michael above. They are basically both correct. In order to use a passive voice, the receiver of the action must be the subject of the sentence. As such, "The garden was being gone to by me," is the only possible way to make this sentence passive. HOWEVER, this sentence is not something anyone speaking or writing good English would ever say. It is strange and, although grammatically correct, not good English. Grammatically you CAN make this sentence passive, but you never would so there is to all purposes no way to make this sentence passive in good English.

 

Another way of explaining this is that "to go" is an intransitive verb, meaning it doesn't have a direct object which directly receives an action in the way a transitive verb does, and intransitive verbs CANNOT be made passive in good English. However, when you use this as your rule you must be careful. There are times when "to go" can be used as a transitive verb! For example, in the sentence, "I am going the way you advised me to," the verb is transitive with the object "the way". Many verbs of motion are like this. "To swim" is usually intransitive, unless you say, "Peter Baker swam the English Channel." In this case, the verb is used transitively and you can make it passive. A reporter might write, "The English Channel was swum by Peter Baker in 2009."

 

Because it can be difficult to differentiate between these "going" verbs used intransitively and used transitively, I advise you when writing or speaking to not try to make these verbs passive. Active voice is preferable in most cases anyway. But I hope that this helps you understand the grammar!

Answer 4

Katherine, forgive me, but the sentence "I was going to the garden." does NOT use the Passive Voice. The verbal tense in question is the Imperfect past, OR The Past Progressive. In either case, "was going"  cannot be expressed in the Passive Voice because the verb, To go" is an Intransitive verb.

Answer 5

Trick question. You can't turn that into the passive voice. In the passive voice, the subject is the receiver of the action. However that sentence has no receiver. It only has a prepositional phrase.

Answer 6

"I was going to the garden" already seems in passive voice, but this is a myth.  How are you trying to change it?  Why?  It seems incredibly awkward for this subject to be the object (as we can see in Michael's example).  If trying to change this sentence, the suggestion is usually to show greater activity (to "show, not tell").  Is this part of an assignment where you simply have to make sentences passive?

 

If you want to make it past tense: "I went to the garden."

 

If you want to make it more active: "I walked to the garden." or "I ran to the garden." or "I skipped to the garden." or an almost infinite list of possible options.