Passive Voice In The Methodology Sections Of Research Journal Articles

Abstract

It has been noted that sentences in academic writing are written both in active and passive sentences. These two forms of grammar in writing have been applied according to how the writers express their ideas in especially academic writing, e.g., journal articles. However, some reviewers and even some grammarian machines sometimes suggest that the writers should change the passive sentences into active forms. This research attempts to analyze the journal articles published online, especially in the framework sections. The data were purposively taken from 12 journal articles that were selected based on purposive sampling by considering that the academic journals have been published online. It is assumed that all the articles had undergone blind review and therefore, they were legibly published. The sentences of the passive forms were taken from the framework sections. From these data, the passive sentences were taken into a table and the frequencies were presented. The results show that most of the authors of the articles use passive sentences in different number. Some use more passive sentences while other less compared to one another either sentence level, clause level, or phrase level. It can be concluded that the authors use passive sentences when they asserted arguments avoiding the agent for making less subjective. In other words, passive sentences are used to reduce subjectivity of the arguments.