Talking about the Past

Understanding the use, formation and recognition of the perfect tense (le passé composé) is crucial. This is commonly used in French to express actions that have occurred in the past.
The passé composé is formed using the present tense of avoir or être (known as auxiliary verbs) followed by the past participle of the main verb.
Regular -er verbs form the past participle by replacing the -er ending with -é. For -ir verbs, replace the -ir with -i, and for -re verbs replace with -u. For example, parler becomes parlé, finir becomes fini, and vendre becomes vendu.
Some verbs use être as their auxiliary verb, and these are usually verbs of motion such as aller (to go), venir (to come), entrer (to enter) and arriver (to arrive). These verbs form the passé composé with être and also require the past participle to agree in gender and number with the subject.
Be able to identify and use irregular past participles, such as taken (pris), seen (vu), and been (été).
For describing events in the very recent past, French uses the construction ‘venir de’ + infinitive, similar to the English ‘just’ done something. For example, ‘Je viens de manger’ means ‘I have just eaten’.
Get comfortable with the imperfect tense (l’imparfait), used to speak about ongoing past or habitual actions. This is formed by dropping the -ons from the nous form of the present, and adding the appropriate endings (-ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient). For example, nous parlons (we speak) becomes je parlais (I was speaking) in the imperfect tense.
Identify when to use the perfect or imperfect tense. The perfect tense is used for completed past actions, while the imperfect tense is used for describing ongoing conditions in the past, habits, simultaneous events or the background context of a story.