Which of the following options is the most suitable conversion of the following sentence into Passive Voice?
Were they cleaning the tank in the afternoon?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Correct Answer
Was the tank being cleaned in the afternoon?
Explanation
The original active voice sentence is an interrogative sentence in the Past Continuous Tense ("Were they cleaning..."). When converting a Past Continuous sentence into the passive voice, the structural formula is: Was/Were + Subject + being + Past Participle (V3) of the verb.
Since the object of the active sentence, "the tank," becomes the new singular subject of our passive sentence, it must take the singular auxiliary verb "Was". Adding the mandatory continuous marker "being" and the past participle "cleaned" gives us: "Was the tank being cleaned in the afternoon?"
The other options break specific grammatical tense rules. Option 1 incorrectly uses "been," which belongs to perfect tenses rather than continuous tenses. Option 3 uses "Were," which creates a subject-verb agreement error with the singular noun "the tank." Option 4 drops the continuous marker "being" entirely, mistakenly shifting the sentence structure into the Simple Past passive voice.
Key Points
When changing an active voice question to passive voice, always match your singular or plural auxiliary verb (was or were) directly to the new subject. Additionally, whenever you see an "-ing" action verb like "cleaning" in the active question, you must find the word "being" in the correct passive choice to preserve the continuous nature of the action.