Mastering Le Passé Composé: French Past Tense

1. Le passé composé

2. What you will learn • How to recognise lepassé composéin French and its equivalent in English • How to form lepassé composéusing avoir • How to use the correct ending for the past participle

3. Le passé composé When we talk about things that happened in the past, we use the past tense. One of these tenses in French is called le passé composé. We use this tense to talk about completed actions in the past. In English, we can talk about a completed action in two ways: I ate I have eaten In French, le passé composécovers both senses: J’aimangé Don’t you think the French version,j’aimangé, looks similar to one of the English versions?

4. Looking at j’aimangéyou can see that two verbs are used to form the tense. Verb 1 = avoir(the auxiliary verb) in the present tense. Verb 2 = mangé, which is the past participle form of manger. Take a look at these sentences and see which ones would be translated using lepassé composé: 1. I chatted with my friend last Friday. 2. They watch a film every weekend. 3. I have eaten my dinner. 4. We will be late for the party. It’s important to recognise the tense in English, so that you know when to use le passé compose in French. Remember: it is a two-verb tense.

5. Let’s look at verb 1. • This verb can be either avoir or être. For the moment, we will work with avoir. Only a small number of verbs use êtrein le passé composé: all others use avoir. • Let’s revise the present tense of avoir. • J’ ai • Tu as • Il/elle/on a • Nous avons • Vousavez • Ills/ellesont • Rememberyourpronunciation: • nous[z]avons, vous [z]avez, ils/elles [z]ont

6. Now let’s look at verb 2. This is the past participle. To form the past participle, we need to know if the verb hasa regular or irregular past participle. If it is a regular verb, we follow these rules: -erverbs change their ending to -é bavarderJ’aibavardé -irverbs change their ending to -i finirJ’aifini -re verbs change their ending to -u vendreJ’aivendu We will look at the past participles of irregular verbs later on.

7. Let’s go through the list for forming lepassé composé: • 1. Le passé composé is a two-verbtense. • 2. Verb 1 is either avoir or être. (So far, we have learned onlyabout avoir.) • 3. Check that you have the correct part of avoir in the present. • 4. Make sure that you have formed Verb 2 – the past participle correctly. • The regular past participle endings are: • -er -é • -ir -i • -re -u

8. Mets les verbes au passé composé. 1. Je (regarder) 2. Nous (aimer) 3. Ils (finir) 4. Elle (attendre) 5. Tu (rougir) 6. Elles (choisir) 7. On (manger) 8. Vous (vendre) Réponse : Réponse : Réponse : Réponse : Réponse : Réponse : Réponse : Réponse : J’ai regardé Nous avons aimé Ils ont fini Elle a attendu Tu as rougi Elles ont choisi On a mangé Vous avez vendu

9. Can you ... ? • Recognise lepassé composéin French and its equivalent in English • Form lepassé composéusing avoir • Use the correct ending for the past participle