German · Chapter 18 · Lesson 10 · Grammar primer
Passive voice
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
wird gebaut is happening, ist gebaut is done
English says the house is built for two different ideas. German splits them. werden plus a participle is the action in progress, sein plus a participle is the finished state it leaves behind. Ask yourself whether someone is doing it right now: if so, you want werden.
Die Tür wird geschlossen. Die Tür ist geschlossen.
In the passive it is worden, not geworden
When werden means to become, its participle is geworden. When it is helping to build a passive, German uses the shorter worden instead. So the house has been built is ist gebaut worden. Saying geworden there is one of the most common passive mistakes, and an easy one to stop making.
Das Haus ist gebaut worden.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 15 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 10 of 17 in this chapter