The Passive Voice Problem in Malaysian Thesis Writing
Passive voice overuse is one of the most common writing weaknesses flagged in Malaysian postgraduate theses, yet it is also one of the least understood. Many students use passive constructions habitually because they associate them with academic formality — “data were collected”, “interviews were conducted”, “the analysis was performed” — and because passive voice was often modelled in the journal articles and textbooks they studied during their undergraduate years. The result is a thesis where the agent behind every action has been removed, producing writing that is technically correct but unnecessarily distant, vague, and harder to follow than it needs to be.
Learning to identify passive voice overuse during proofreading — and knowing when to convert passive constructions to active ones — is one of the most impactful revision skills you can develop for your thesis writing.
What Passive Voice Actually Is
A sentence is in the passive voice when the grammatical subject is the receiver of the action rather than the doer. “The questionnaires were distributed to 210 participants” is passive — questionnaires is the subject, but questionnaires did not do the distributing. The active equivalent is “The researcher distributed questionnaires to 210 participants” — now the researcher is the subject and the agent of the action is clear.
Passive constructions are formed with a form of the verb “to be” plus a past participle: “was collected”, “were conducted”, “is shown”, “has been analysed”. When you see these patterns clustering in your writing, you are looking at passive voice. Not all passive constructions are errors — as discussed below — but when they dominate entire paragraphs, they create the flat, agentless quality that makes thesis writing feel mechanical.
How to Find Passive Voice During Proofreading
The most efficient method for identifying passive voice overuse during proofreading is to use the Find function in Microsoft Word to search for the most common passive auxiliary combinations. Search for “was” and “were” and review each instance — if these are followed by a past participle verb, you have found a passive construction. Pay particular attention to your methodology chapter, where passive voice accumulates most heavily in Malaysian theses: “data were collected”, “interviews were recorded”, “transcripts were coded”, “themes were identified”.
Microsoft Word’s grammar checker can also be configured to flag passive voice. Go to File > Options > Proofing > Settings and check the box next to “Passive sentences”. This will not catch every instance, but it highlights the most obvious clusters and gives you a starting point. After the automated sweep, do a manual reading pass specifically looking for the “to be + past participle” pattern and marking each instance for review.
When Passive Voice Is Appropriate in a Thesis
Before converting every passive construction to active, it is important to know when passive voice is genuinely appropriate in academic writing. Passive voice is correct and preferable when the agent of the action is unknown, unimportant, or deliberately not named. “Participants were informed about their right to withdraw” is appropriately passive — who informed them (the researcher) is obvious from context and does not need to be repeated in every sentence. “The sample was drawn from the 2023 university enrolment database” is also appropriately passive — the emphasis is on the sample and its source, not on who drew it.
Passive voice is also sometimes appropriate in scientific and quantitative reporting conventions where the focus is on the process or result rather than the researcher. “Cronbach’s alpha was calculated for each subscale” fits this convention. In qualitative research, however, where the researcher’s active role in data collection and interpretation is part of the epistemological transparency of the study, active voice is generally more appropriate and more honest: “I conducted semi-structured interviews” rather than “semi-structured interviews were conducted.”
Converting Passive to Active: A Practical Process
When you identify a passive construction that should be converted to active, the process is straightforward. First, identify the agent — who or what performed the action? Second, make that agent the grammatical subject of the sentence. Third, convert the passive verb to its active form and adjust tense as needed. “The results were analysed using thematic analysis” becomes “The researcher analysed the results using thematic analysis” or “This study analysed the results using thematic analysis.” Both versions are active, clear, and appropriately academic.
Some passive sentences require restructuring rather than just agent insertion. “It was decided that a qualitative approach would be used” is both passive and vague — who decided? Converting this requires also making the decision-making agent explicit: “The researcher chose a qualitative approach for two reasons.” This version is not just more active — it is more transparent and more informative.
Targeting the Methodology Chapter First
When tackling passive voice overuse in your thesis, prioritise your methodology chapter. This is where passive constructions accumulate most severely in most Malaysian theses, and it is also the chapter where active voice has the greatest communicative benefit. Your methodology chapter is where you explain what you did, why you did it, and how. All of these explanations are improved by active, direct language that makes clear that you — the researcher — made deliberate, reasoned choices throughout the research process.
A methodology chapter that reads “data were collected from twenty participants, who were selected using purposive sampling. Interviews were conducted at locations convenient to participants. Transcripts were produced and were subsequently coded” can be substantially improved with active voice: “The researcher collected data from twenty participants selected through purposive sampling. Interviews took place at locations convenient to participants, and the researcher transcribed and coded each interview.” The second version is clearer, more professional, and more appropriate for a qualitative study where researcher involvement is methodologically significant. Proofreading specifically for passive voice overuse is a targeted intervention that produces measurable improvement in readability throughout your thesis.
