KS3 · French · Year 9
Emergency services: -er verbs in the perfect tense with 'être'
Past and present events: perfect tense, negation, questions
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use the perfect tense to talk about medical situations in France.
1 of 8
Emergency services: -er verbs in the perfect tense with 'être': 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 tense to talk about medical situations in France.
Key learning points
- 'S' at the beginning of a word is soft 's' (sont) but a single 's' between vowels is a hard 's' ('vous êtes').
- All French people have a 'Carte Vitale' necessary to use French health services. Call the SAMU in a medical emergency.
- The present tense has one conjugated verb; the perfect tense has two verbs, a part of avoir/être + a past participle.
- Use a conjugated form of 'avoir' with most verbs but use 'être' with movement verbs, and past participles must agree.
Words to know
- 's' liaison
- pronouncing a usually silent final consonant because a word starting with a vowel follows
- perfect tense
- a verb tense that describes completed actions in the past e.g. 'I said', 'she played'
Common mistakes
Every 's' at the end of a word is silent because of the silent final consonant rule.
Usually 's' is silent at the end of a word but if the next word starts with a vowel, you usually hear liaison, whereby the final consonant is pronounced. When the final consonat is 's', it sounds like the hard 's' in 'maison'.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Task C3 could be adapted to add practice of question words in the perfect tense or even made into a more independent writing task, where students describe a (real or fictional) accident they have had.