Select the option that expresses the given sentence in passive voice. He wrote an inspiring speech for the event.

Correct — A. The active verb is wrote — simple past. The simple past passive is was/were + past participle, and the new subject, an inspiring speech, is singular, so the auxiliary is was.

That gives was written, with he becoming the agent by him and the adverbial for the event kept at the end.

An inspiring speech was written by him for the event — option (a).

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  An inspiring speech was being written by him for the event. — was being written is the past continuous passive. It answers He was writing an inspiring speech, an action still under way. Wrote reports the act as finished.
• (c)
  An inspiring speech has been written by him for the event. — has been written is the present perfect passive and belongs to He has written. It pulls the sentence into the present perfect, which the original does not use.
• (d)
  An inspiring speech is written by him for the event. — is written is the simple present passive and reports a habit or a general truth. The original fixes the writing in past time with wrote.

Every passive has two moving parts: the form of be, which carries the tense, and the past participle, which never changes. Get the first right and the option set collapses.

The second thing to check is agreement. The auxiliary agrees with the new subject — the thing that was in the object slot — not with the original doer.

Here the new subject is an inspiring speech, singular, so was written is correct and were written would not be. If the object had been plural, the same tense would take were.

Key facts

• Simple past active becomes was or were plus the past participle in the passive.
• The passive auxiliary agrees with the new subject, so a singular object takes was.
• Present perfect passive is has or have been plus the past participle.
• Past continuous passive is was or were being plus the past participle.

Common traps

• Reading wrote as though it were has written and reaching for the present perfect passive.
• Making the auxiliary agree with him instead of with an inspiring speech.
• Believing a change of voice licenses a change of tense. Only the form of the verb changes.

No directly related past PYQ was found.