Contraintes de la transformation de la voix active a la voix passive. Le cas des apprenants de Northern Business College SHS 2B, Tamale.

Abstract

This research analyses the difficulties associated with the use and transformation of sentences from the active voice into the passive voice in French. The analysis was done through the various use and transformation of the active voice to the passive voice in some documents or books by different authors and through interactions and dialogues with learners and some teachers of French language. It was found out that most students or learners of French are not able to do the correct transformation of the active voice to the passive voice in simple sentences because there are some transformations that use the prepositions “par” or “de” and others use neither of these prepositions but denotes the idea of passive voice. This led us to identify the difficulties facing learners of French in a sense that some of the “complément d’agent” is being introduced by the prepositions “par” or “de”, and with others, these prepositions are not being introduced to the complement. It has been established that the difficulties were mainly due to the multiplicity of these transformations of simple sentences into the passive voice. It was also found out that the teaching strategies used by some teachers of French in the teaching of the passive voice are coupled with the influence of either the English language or the learner’s first language (mother tongue). This also contributes to the difficulties encountered in the passive transformation. In an attempt to resolve the problem, teaching strategies such as dialogues, interactions, giving of structural exercises and other techniques were adopted, and also analyzing various authors work. The methods used have been evaluated to identify the successes and short comings of our intervention. Suggestions have then been made in a bid to enhancing the teaching and learning of that aspect of the French grammar in the form of recommended exercises.