The use of the passive voice by Native and Non- Native English Speakers

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how non-native speakers of English use the English passive construction. The objective is to compare EFL speakers of two completely different languages (Spanish and German) with the English native speakers. The first part will be devoted to exploring the basic uses of the passive and how is constructed. This part will be more theoretical and it will broadly describe the passive in the three languages mentioned above. Moreover, the topic will be extended by revising other studies on the use of the passive by EFL learners. The second part will be practical and corpus-based in order to analyse different data in the three groups of speakers. It will analyse similarities and differences among the three groups, focusing especially on quantitative comparisons between native and non-native speakers (i.e. focusing not only on questions of misuse, but also on overuse and underuse). These data will be used with the intention of answering the following questions: 1. Is the passive used by non-native speakers as frequently as it is by native ones? 2. If there any differences, does the learners’ L1 matter?