Task Blog

I will give some examples of active sentences based on the article and change it into a passive sentences.

*Active sentences are indicated by underline

1. The first article

Pearl Harbor in Context

When U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that December 7, 1941, would be “a date which will live in infamy,” he was primarily referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. However, later in that same speech, he clarified that the Pearl Harbor attack was just one element of a larger Japanese offensive that was unfolding that day. On December 8 local time (the following locations are on the other side of the International Date Line from the United States), several hours before the first planes were sighted over Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces began an amphibious invasion of Malaya. By that evening, the Japanese had established a strong beachhead and had devastated the Royal Air Force’s offensive capability in the area. Japanese bombers from Formosa struck U.S. airfields in the Philippines, destroying more than half of the U.S. Army’s aircraft in the Far East and wiping out the largest contingent of B-17 Flying Fortresses outside the continental United States. Japanese bombers launched from the Marshall Islands targeted the American garrison on Wake Island as the prelude to a land invasion (the repulse of an initial amphibious assault on December 11 was the first tactical defeat suffered by the Japanese navy in World War II). British air power in Hong Kong was destroyed by a Japanese air raid, and Japanese land forces invaded Thailand. Air raids on Guam preceded an invasion that the island’s meager defensive units were ill equipped to repel; American forces surrendered on December 10. In Shanghai the gunboats USS Wake and HMS Peterel (U.S. and British flagged, respectively) presented the only obstacles to Japanese occupation of the city’s International Settlement. The Peterel was sunk by Japanese fire after a spirited but ultimately futile defense, while the Wake’s skeleton crew was overwhelmed by a Japanese boarding party, making that ship the only one in the U.S. Navy to be captured intact during World War II. As Roosevelt summarized, “Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area.”

These successes were entirely in keeping with Japanese Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku’s appraisal of the situation in the Pacific prior to hostilities. “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.” (This is likely the inspiration for the apocryphal “sleeping giant” quote commonly attributed to Yamamoto.) Indeed, almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor, the tide would permanently turn in the Pacific at the Battle of Midway. Yamamoto’s sweeping, excessively complex battle plans, which had served him well in December 1941, would prove to be his undoing at Midway. American naval pilots, aided by decrypted Japanese communications and no small amount of luck, destroyed Japan’s first-line carrier force and effectively deprived Japan of the ability to prosecute an offensive war in the Pacific.

References : https://www.britannica.com/story/pearl-harbor-in-context

2. The second article

Mac OS

OPERATING SYSTEM

Mac OS, operating system (OS) developed by the American computer company Apple Inc. The OS was introduced in 1984 to run the company’s Macintosh line of personal computers (PCs). The Macintosh heralded the era of graphical user interface (GUI) systems, and it inspired Microsoft Corporation to develop its own GUI, the Windows OS.

Apple’s marketing for the introduction of the Macintosh focused heavily on its operating system’s intuitive ease of use. Unlike virtually all other contemporary PCs, the Mac OS (initially designated simply System Software, with a version number appended) was graphically based. Rather than typing commands and directory paths at text prompts, users moved a mouse pointer to visually navigate the Finder—a series of virtual folders and files, represented by icons. Most computer operating systems eventually adopted the GUI model. In the 1980s Apple made an agreement allowing Microsoft to use certain aspects of the Mac interface in early versions of Windows. However, except for a brief period in the 1990s, Mac OS has never been licensed for use with computers made by manufacturers other than Apple.

Later Mac OS releases introduced features such as Internet file sharing, network browsing, and multiple user accounts. In 1996 Apple acquired rival NeXT Computers, which was founded by Steven Jobs after his departure from Apple, and in 2001 the company rolled out Mac OS X, a major redesign based on both the NextStep system and Apple’s most recent OS release. OS X ran on a UNIX kernel (core software code) and offered technical advances such as memory protection and preemptive multitasking, along with a more versatile Finder, an elegant-looking interface called Aqua, and a convenient graphical “Dock” bar for launching frequently used applications. Updates to OS X added features such as automated backups and a “Dashboard” manager for small, handy applications called widgets.

From 2007 Apple unveiled a number of mobile devices that could access the Internet, including the iPhone smartphone and the iPad tablet computer. Apple soon emphasized the ability of OS X to connect with these devices. In 2011 Apple introduced iCloud, a cloud computing service that allowed users to share data among all of their Apple devices, for both OS X and the mobile operating system iOS. Apple added more features allowing connectivity between devices to successive updates of OS X, iOS, and later watchOS (the operating system for the Apple Watch smartwatch). These features included the ability to receive phone calls (made to the iPhone) and the means of quickly sharing data (such as photos and text) among devices.

References : https://www.britannica.com/technology/Mac-OS