how to use "fail" correctly when it is used as a verb

[kwfine]

Hi,

here are two sentences, which confuse me a lot
1. He was failed to get it right
1. He failed to get it right

Could you help me pick the correct one out please!
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各位前輩安安, 我是kitty喔!

[BuddhaGeo]

The first sentence doesn't make any sense.
The second is perfectly fine.
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[Jamie (K)]

"He was failed" means that some teacher gave him a failing mark in a class. It's the passive voice. "He was failed to get it right," is a strange sentence that means that somebody gave him a failing mark so that he would be motivated to do something correctly later.

"He failed to get it right," is the correct sentence. It means, "He didn't do it correctly."

I should warn you about some strange grammar that many Chinese learners of English devise. At the beginning, many of them don't want to learn the irregular verbs, so they make themselves understood by using "was" plus the base form of the verb. So they come out with incorrect sentences like, "I was go to the park," or, "We was make trouble," instead of, "I went to the park," and, "He made trouble." Once they're understood, pretty soon they do this with all their verbs, but it's Chinglish, not English. Remember that we don't use "was" or "were" as an auxiliary verb in the past tense, unless the sentence is in the passive.

[kwfine]

Thanks aBuddhaGeo and Jamie!
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各位前輩安安, 我是kitty喔!