KS4 · French · Year 10
Ils sont venus à Paris : Present perfect
My neighbourhood: Mon nouveau pays
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/9
Your learning goal
I can recognise when to use the simple past and when to use the present perfect when translating French into English, in the context of arriving to live in a new country.
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Ils sont venus à Paris : Present perfect: 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 recognise when to use the simple past and when to use the present perfect when translating French into English, in the context of arriving to live in a new country.
Key learning points
- The simple past is formed by combining an auxiliary verb (avoir or être) with a past participle.
- The present perfect is formed in the same way as the simple past, combining an auxiliary verb and a past participle.
- When translating into English, we need to think whether the simple past or the present perfect is the best translation.
Words to know
- auxiliary verb
- a form of either 'avoir' or 'être' used to form the perfect tense
- past participle
- a verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb
- simple past
- a tense in English that describes things that happened and finished in the past
- present perfect
- a tense in English that describes actions that happened at an unspecified time in the past and has a connection to the present
Common mistakes
The perfect tense can only be translated as what happened in French.
The perfect tense refers to the past in two ways: what happened and what has happened. Context tells us the intended meaning. 'Hier, je suis allé en ville' - yesterday I went to town. 'Je suis déjà allé à Paris' - I have already been to Paris.
For parents, carers and teachers
- When introducing 'occasion', you may wish to talk in more depth about 'faux amis' as a reminder that not all words that look like English mean the same thing.