KS3 · French · Year 9
Montreal - habitual and one-off past events: imperfect and perfect
How things used to be: imperfect tense, ordinal numbers
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use the imperfect and perfect tenses to talk about one-off events and events that happened regularly.
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Montreal - habitual and one-off past events: imperfect and 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 use the imperfect and perfect tenses to talk about one-off events and events that happened regularly.
Key learning points
- Adjectives ending -al in English often end in -al or more commonly -el in French. The feminine form is -elle.
- Use the perfect tense for specific one-off past events and the imperfect for regularly repeated past events.
- Use the present tense of avoir/être and a past participle to form the perfect tense.
- Use the present tense of the 'nous' form, remove -ons and add -ais/ait for the singular imperfect tense.
- The verb shows if the action used to happen all the time or was a single, completed event; time phrases give detail.
Words to know
- imperfect tense
- tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past
Common mistakes
You can use a time phrase to show whether you mean a completed action in the past or a regular past event/activity.
In French, the verb alone already shows whether you mean a completed action in the past (use the formation rule for the perfect tense) or a regular past event/activity (use the formation rule for the imperfect tense). Time phrases can also be added.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Task B3 offers an opportunity to discuss differences between the québécois accent and a French accent, including the speed, ennunciation and more nasal pronunciation of the [in] sound.