KS4 · French · Year 10
Ce week-end: impersonal verbs
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use impersonal verbs to tell the time, describe weather, say what there is and what is necessary in the context of making plans.
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Ce week-end: impersonal verbs: 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 impersonal verbs to tell the time, describe weather, say what there is and what is necessary in the context of making plans.
Key learning points
- An impersonal verb is a verb and subject that don't refer to a particular person or thing.
- To say what time it is use impersonal verb il est + number + heure (s) + minutes.
- Il est + adjective + de + infinitive can be used to express it is difficult/easy/forbidden to + a verb.
- Il fait (with weather expressions), il y a (there is/are) and il faut (it is necessary) are useful impersonal verbs.
- [y] and [i] sounds like 'midi' and 'physique'.
Words to know
- impersonal verb
- a verb that doesn't refer to a particular person or thing, and whose subject is most often 'il' (it)
Common mistakes
The subject pronoun 'il' always means 'he'.
There are a number of impersonal verbs such as 'il faut', 'il neige' and 'il pleut'. Verbs such as 'il fait' and 'il est' can also be used in an impersonal sense. In these cases, the English meaning is 'it' or impersonal 'you', 'we' as appropriate.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Speaking task A3 requires students to use the present tense however, it follows a practice task using 'il y a', 'il y avait' and 'il y aura'. Teachers might wish to adapt the task to encourage students to use more tenses if appropriate for their students.