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I have been teaching a 14 year old female student for a month now and came across the passive tense in the text book we were using. Finding it difficult, I got an exercise book to practice the passive tenses, then some "fill the gap" exercises with the correct tense.

I then came across the following questions which I understood how to answer, but I just couldn't explain to the student why.

The sentence to "fill in the gap" with is as follows:

question 1:
Why .......................... from her job? Didn't she enjoy it?

(fill in the gap with Sue/resign) - "did Sue resign"

question 2:
Why .......................... from his job? What did he do wrong?

(fill in the gap with Bill/sack) - "was Bill sacked"

I myself understood the answer, but I can't explain why. Is there a way I can explain this to my student why the answers are such?

You need to think about who "did" the action and who "received" the action.

In the first case Sue did the action.
In the second case Bill received the action.

You may want to look at active voice, passive voice in EnglishClub.com, which explains more, including some of the reasons why we use the passive.