The use of the passive voice in science students’ writing

The passive voice has been discouraged by writing textbooks (Pullum, 2014), yet it remains a key register feature in academic science writing, and is highly frequent in research articles (Leong, 2014, 2020) and undergraduate science textbooks (Luo, 2018). Functionally the passive voice is considered as contributing to logical information structure of the text (Biber et al., 1999; Halliday, 1988) as well as to achieving an objective voice (Ding, 2002). The passive can be difficult to acquire for those for whom English is a second language and is used at lower frequencies by writers using English as a second language (Hinkel, 2002a) . The focus of this article is undergraduate science laboratory reports. Using a small corpus of laboratory reports, drawn from the British Academic Written English corpus (BAWE), use of the passive voice by writers of English as a first language (L1) and those writing in English as a second language (L2) was compared with its frequency and use in research articles. L1 writers of undergraduate science laboratory reports were found to use the passive about as frequently as it is used in research articles and textbooks, while L2 writers used it much less frequently. • Use of the passive voice in undergraduate science laboratory reports was investigated. • L1 student writers used the passive as frequently as do authors of research articles. • L2 writers used it much less frequently, especially in the Method section. • Modal passives and modal perfectives were particularly challenging for L2 writers. • Non-standard uses by L2 writers are analysed and suggestions are made for teaching.