KS4 · French · Year 10
Que faisais-tu quand ... ? The imperfect tense with regular verbs ('be' + ing)
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/7
Your learning goal
I can describe what I and others were doing and what was happening using the imperfect tense.
1 of 7
Que faisais-tu quand ... ? The imperfect tense with regular verbs ('be' + ing): 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 describe what I and others were doing and what was happening using the imperfect tense.
Key learning points
- The imperfect tense is used to describe what was happening or what you were doing when something else happened.
- For imperfect of regular verbs remove -ons from 'nous' present tense and add: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient.
- [ai] sounds like 'vrai', [on] is a nasal sound like 'non', and [ez] sounds like 'écrire'.
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
- sound-symbol correspondence
- relationship between letters and their sounds
Common mistakes
The ending -aient is pronounced differently to -ais and -ait.
Although the third person plural ending of the imperfect tense contains a lot of letters, it is pronounced the same way as -ais and -ait. Students will need a lot of practice saying the -aient ending out loud to become confident with this verb form.
For parents, carers and teachers
- Highlight that the endings -ais, ait and -aient are pronounced alike. When the -aient ending is shown, draw students' attention to it and encourage them to repeat the verb a number of times. Task A2 has two versions of audio file. Use 'subject' for the task and 'conjugated' for feedback.