Passive - English confusion!!

Bonjour Patty,

Thanks for writing.

The phrase "every day" indicates that the imperfect is needed. To use a simpler example: Bob woke up at 6am every day = Bob se réveillait à 6h tous les jours.

This is a fundamental difference between the imparfait and passé composé; you can't use the latter for repeated actions, as indicated by "tous les jours." See Imparfait to refer to past habits or repeated actions

That said, putting this concept into the passive voice adds an additional layer of complexity. The imparfait is far more common with the verb être, but the passé composé is possible - and both are generally equivalent to "was/were."

Therefore, we're going to change this question to eliminate this complication.

So to answer your question, Bob était réveillé par and Bob a été réveillé par are both equivalent to "Bob was woken by." But once you add tous les jours, only the former is correct in French. In contrast, "Bob was woken by the alarm yesterday at 6am" = Bob a été réveillé par le réveil hier à 6h.

Regarding the example with "They were welcomed by", in the absence of a clearer context, both tenses would indeed be correct here. In order to stick to the "simple tense Passive form" of the lesson, we've now replaced this example with a non-ambiguous one :)

I hope that's helpful!
Bonne journée !