Suomen passiivi yläkoulun oppilaiden käsityksissä: tietoisuus, tunnistaminen ja osaamisen itsearviointi: Finnish passive in the perceptions of upper secondary school students: awareness, identification and self-assessment of competence

This article deals with Finnish-speaking upper comprehensive school students’ language awareness of Finnish passive verbs. The aim of the study was to find out what the participants know about passive voice, how they identify passive verbs in written language and how they evaluate their skills of defining the concept and identifying passive verbs. The data consisted of the answers to an electronic questionnaire, involving different types of questions and tasks (multiple choice, Likert-scale, open answers) by 111 students from 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. The results show that the participants succeeded in defining the concept of the passive voice, though they viewed the qualities of the passive voice quite narrowly, referring mainly to unspecified subjects. For the participants, identifying passive verbs in sentences was slightly easier than in a text. The students’ evaluation of their skills was mostly accurate.