Paco had had a dreamt about this journey before: Florida is sometimes hit by hurricanes

In this topic 4 you will learn about the passive voice in different tenses (mainly in the present simple and the past simple tenses).
After spending a few days in Washington D.C., Paco changed his mind and decided to travel south instead of north, because he wanted warmer weather. He had Florida in mind.

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Seal of the State of Florida.
By BetacommandBot. Public domain.

 

 

Florida is a state located in the southeast region of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the north. It was the 27th state admitted to the United States. Much of the land mass of the state is a large peninsula with the Gulf of Mexico to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

It is nicknamed the "Sunshine State" because of its generally warm climate—subtropical in the northern and central regions of the state, with a true tropical climate in the southern portion. The state has four large urban areas, a number of smaller industrial cities, and many small towns. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the state population was 18,328,340 in 2008, ranking Florida as the fourth most populous state in the U.S. Tallahassee is the state capital, Jacksonville is the largest city, and the Miami metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan area.

Taken from Wikipedia.

Other important cities in the state of Florida are Tampa, Orlando, Coral Springs, Saint Petersburg and Ford Lauderdale.

Friendship fountain in Jacksonville. Saint Pete skyline from pier.
Fort Lauderdale Skyline.
By Digon3. GNU license. By Jim Dietrich . GNU license. By Rstepp. Public domain.

 

 


Can you identify a couple of passive sentences in the text, one in the present tense and another in the past.


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The Passive voice is used when the focus is on the action. 'Who' or 'what' is performing the action, however, is not important or not known:

My car was stolen last week.

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American football: the Miami Dolphins
Sun Life Stadium is an American football, baseball, soccer stadium.
By Adamfirst Public domain.
The Miami Dolphins are a professional football team based in the Miami, Florida metropolitan area. They play home games at Sun Life Stadium, in the suburb of Miami Gardens. They are headquartered at the Miami Dolphins Training Facility in Davie, Florida. The Dolphins belong to the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Dolphins were founded by Joseph Robbie, and began play in the American Football League as an expansion team in 1966, an example of that seminal league's expanding the sport to areas that were not then represented. Miami joined the NFL as part of the AFL-NFL merger. The Dolphins are the oldest continuous major-league professional sports franchise in the state of Florida. (The first Florida sports franchise was the Miami Seahawks of the AAFC in 1946.)
Taken from Wikipedia.
Watch this video of the Miami Dolphins and listen to the team's song.


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Sometimes a statement in the passive voice is more polite than one in the active voice:

An error was made.

In this case, we focus on the fact that a mistake was made, but we do not blame anyone. We are not saying:

You have made a mistake, so it's your fault.


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The origin of the name Florida


Chief Agueybana greeting Juan Ponce de León
By Marine 69-71. Public domain.
Juan Ponce de León y Figueroa, (1474 – July 1521) was a Spanish explorer. He became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish Crown. He led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named. He is associated with the legend of the Fountain of Youth. Seeking the mythical “Fountain of Youth,” the Spanish conqueror discovered a piece of land that he named FLORIDA because it was discovered on the day of the Spanish 'Pascua Florida'.
 
Adapted from Wikipedia.
 
Would you like to know more about the origin of the names of the different States? If so, click here. It's really interesting.

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As you already know, this is a very useful and complete dictionary online.

Any doubt about English Grammar? Here you have a grammar online in case you need some help.

If you have any doubt about the pronunciation of any word, you can ask Mike to pronounce it. Try
this link.

Click here to use Mike

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