usually, a sentence has "somebody" who is "doing something" (and, often, but not always, somebody is "doing something" to "someone" or to "some thing"). Look at this passive voice sentence:
There are assumptions made about this literature in that it is moral and clean.
You will see that in the above sentence, the person (persons?) making the "assumptions" aren't in the sentence at all...they (he? she?) are ghosts, lurking about invisibly. Now, look at this fixed sentence:
Readers assume that this literature is moral and clean.
You can see that the "doers of the action" are present (the "readers"), and we can see them doing the action ("assume"). By inserting the actual "doers of the action," I have changed the sentence from passive to active voice.
Passive voice is generally "bad" because when several sentences are missing their subjects, the reading becomes abstract...and the reader becomes tired and confused about who is doing what to whom. That's why English teachers tell their students not to use passive voice.
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