'Change the voice' vs 'Change the narration'

[Tom]

Hi

Many 'English test papers' in Pakistan have the following questions like this:

Q1- Change the voice. or
Q2- Change the narration.

Could you please tell me if it seems complete to you? Also how about capatilization of v in voice and n in narration?

Tom

[Mister Micawber]

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No capitalization. I have no idea what the sentences mean. Perhaps in context, e.g. during a documentary videotape editing session, they would make sense.
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_________________
Canadian-American native speaker
who teaches English for a living at Mister Micawber's
ESL cafe: Interview with Mr. Micawber

[Tom]

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

I wouldn't have understood you original question, either.

If you're telling students to transform sentences in a certain way, then the goal should be stated more specifically (clearly):

1. Change the following sentences to the passive voice.

2. Change the following sentences to indirect speech (reported speech).

Just a note on changing active sentences to passive sentences (since it sounds like you might possibly be creating exercises for people):

Make sure that both sentences would be natural and realistic sentences. "You are hated by me" is grammatically correct, but not terribly natural (i.e. very unlikely to be used -- which a Google search for that sentence corroborates and a BNC search is even less enthusiastic about it.)

Amy
_________________
Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Tom]

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Aha, both ways. Yes, I guess your sentence would be OK. Or you could say:
Change the voice to active or passive in each of the sentences.

A really tough test of their skills would be to add "where appropriate" to the end of the sentence.

As to your other question, you could possibly omit 'the' and just say 'passive voice' but you cannot add 'the' and say 'the indirect speech'. I'd say this is mainly connected to the fact that voice is a countable noun and speech isn't (in this context).

Amy
_________________
Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English