Les enfants auront suivi le guide. -> Le guide aura été suivi par les enfants.
But this answer was marked incorrect:
sera suivie par
aura été suivi par (wrong)
Aren't they the exact same construction? So why use sera here? The passive voice has been the hardest aspect for me to understand since it seems so arbitrary. Help!
No expert, but the difference is that "Laura will be followed by her friends" is already in the passive voice - the active version would be "Her friends will follow Laura". You can spot the passive construction because it contains a conjugation of "to be" and in French, the use of être for a verb which normally takes avoir in passé composé, imparfait, futur parfait etc. The first example is "The children will have followed the guide/ The guide will have been followed by the children"
A saving grace of this confusing type of sentence is that the English and French verb constructions are the same.
Rebecca,
As Anne notes, the 2 sentences are not in the same tense, so the verb conjugation required is not the same.
The first sentence you note is in future anterior tense - a ‘compound’ tense, while the second is in future simple - a ‘simple’ tense.
The tense in the equivalent sentences in French passive voice and the tense in French active voice must match - it is not arbitrary.
Again as Anne states, this is the same situation as in English.
Forming La Voix Passive with compound tenses in French (French Passive Voice)
Conjugate être in the future tense in French (Le Futur Simple)
Forming La Voix Passive with simple tenses in French (French Passive Voice)
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