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In a chart that illustrated the number of male and female participants in different clubs, I noticed that:

"The arts and crafts club was the most popular choice among men."

I attempted to transform the aforementioned active sentence into a passive one:

"The arts and crafts club was chosen by the most men."

However, as I asked my tutor, they told me that the passive sentence was unnatural and gave no further explanation. Please explain for me why the passive sentence sounds unnatural. Is it a grammatical mistake?

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This is unrelated to the fact that the adjective is superlative. To form the passive voice, the verb has to be transitive. Here the verb is was which is intransitive, and hence we can't do it.

The OP’s proposed version uses chosen, which is a different verb from the original.

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OP's original sentence:

"The arts and crafts club was the most popular choice among men."

First let's see how to change active voice to passive voice.

I How to change Active to Passive voice.

Reference Study.com..
Look at the following sentence:
The cat chased the rabbit.
Step 1: Identify the subject of the sentence: the cat.
Step 2: Identify the action or the verb of the sentence:
chased.
Step 3: Identify the object in the sentence:
the rabbit.
Step 4: Rewrite the sentence starting with the object, add a conjugated form of "to be" to the verb, and end with the subject in a prepositional phrase.
We write the sentence in the passive voice as follows:
The rabbit was chased by the cat.

II. Why passive voice is not possible?.
We cannot form passive voice because there is no object as the main verb "was" is intransitive.

  • Sentences with copular "be" verbs (linking verbs) as the main verb cannot form passive voice.
  • Passive voice requires "be" as an auxiliary verb, combined with a past participle.

If you transform the sentence into a proper
Subject - verb - object
sentence, you can convert the sentence into a passive voice.(for academic interest).
OP has tried to do this:

The arts and crafts club was chosen by the most men.

When converting 'choice' to 'choose' (noun to verb) requires changing 'popular' to 'popularly', (adjective to adverb) which is needed for preserving the original sentence's meaning." "by the most men" is not correct in OP's sentence.
The proper conversion maintaining the original meaning is :
Active: "Men most popularly chose the arts and crafts club.".
Passive: "The arts and crafts club was most popularly chosen by men."

If you remove "popularly", the sentence loses its original sense because:

  • It doesn't imply comparison with other clubs.
  • It doesn't convey that the arts and crafts club was the preferred option.
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The following is ungrammatical with the definite article:

The most men chose arts and crafts.

So the passive version of that sentence is likewise ungrammatical:

Arts and crafts was chosen by the most men.

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