KS3 · French · Year 9
A mystery: perfect and imperfect tenses together
Ongoing past events: imperfect tense
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/7
Your learning goal
I can use the perfect and imperfect tenses together to describe simultaneous events in the context of a mystery.
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A mystery: perfect and imperfect tenses together: slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
Original teaching resources
The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I can use the perfect and imperfect tenses together to describe simultaneous events in the context of a mystery.
Key learning points
- The singular forms of ‘voir’ in the present tense are ‘vois’ (‘je’, ‘tu’) and ‘voit’ (‘il’, ‘elle’).
- The verb 'voir' is used in many expressions in French like 'voir grand', 'rien à voir avec' and 'voir la vie en rose'.
- Use the imperfect tense to express the past continuous 'was -ing'.
- Use the perfect + imperfect tenses together with a conjunction to describe what happened when you were doing something.
Words to know
- imperfect tense
- tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past, or to say what was happening
Common mistakes
The imperfect tense only describes what used to happen.
The imperfect tense describes what was happening and what used to happen and can be used with the perfect tense and a conjunction like 'quand' or 'pendant que'.
For parents, carers and teachers
- This lesson could lead to a group work task where students play the different characters and come up with their own questions and answers for the mystery.