How French works
The passive is a verb form you use when you want to talk about something that's being done to someone or something.
Take the idea of a dog eating a biscuit. The most usual way of saying this in English would be The dog eats the biscuit. This form is called the active.
Now suppose you didn't want to describe this from the dog's point of view but from the biscuit's. In this case you'd use the passive in English: The biscuit is eaten by the dog.
In French a very similar process happens. Take the active sentence :
Le chien mange le biscuit
In the passive this becomes:
Le biscuit est mangé par le chien
Notice here that the position of the words chien and biscuit are swapped so that biscuit comes before the verb and chien after the verb. Also, the word chien is introduced by the word par.
The final thing to notice is what's happened to the verb. The passive verb is formed by replacing the active verb (mange) with être plus the past participle of the active verb:
mange → est mangé
The passive is less common in French than it is in English. Very often the French use the pronoun on instead:
On m'a conseillé de prendre quelques jours de repos
I was advised to take a few days rest
Here are some more examples of passive sentences:
Le rôle est joué par une célèbre actrice
The role is played by a famous actress
Le garçon est accompagné par sa mère
The boy is accompanied by his mother
In the passive, the past participle must always agree with its subject:
La fille est accompagnée de sa mère
The girl is accompanied by her mother
Les enfants sont accompagnés de leurs parents
The children are accompanied by their parents
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