KS4 · French · Year 10
Ma ville avant : imperfect of 'être', 'avoir' and 'faire'
My neighbourhood: Là où j'habite
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can talk about what my town used to be like in the past using the imperfect tense of regular and irregular verbs.
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Ma ville avant : imperfect of 'être', 'avoir' and 'faire': 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 talk about what my town used to be like in the past using the imperfect tense of regular and irregular verbs.
Key learning points
- 'avoir' and 'faire' have regular stems in the imperfect tense: 'av-' and 'fais-'.
- 'être' has an irregular stem in the imperfect tense: 'ét-'.
- 'être', 'avoir' and 'faire' have regular endings in the imperfect tense: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient.
- 'il y avait' is the imperfect tense form of 'il y a', meaning 'there used to be'.
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
- ét-
- irregular imperfect stem of 'être' (to be, being)
Common mistakes
'Être' is used to translate the phrase 'there used to be'.
Although in English, 'there used to be' has the idea of 'being', this is not the case in French. The phrase 'il y a' means there is but the verb is 'a' which comes from 'avoir'. It's the same with 'there used to be' - 'il y avait'.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Task B2 has two options. Option 1 is aimed at the majority of students. Option 2 is aimed at those students who may need more support and less complexity in the task.