KS3 · French · Year 8

School reporter: past inversion questions

Past events: the perfect tense, questions

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Your learning goal

I can plan questions for a school report using inversion and the perfect tense

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School reporter: past inversion questions: 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

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What you’ll learn

I can plan questions for a school report using inversion and the perfect tense

Key learning points

The French [s] can make a hard 'z' or a soft 's' sound: maison, société.
The SSC [tion] makes a soft 's' sound: attention. The SSC [ç/c] makes a soft 's' sound: cinéma.
Use the perfect tense to talk about an action that happened in the past: avoir + past participle.
To ask a closed question in the perfect tense use inversion: swap the subject and the verb (avoir): as-tu commencé ?

Words to know

[s]: pronounced as in 'maison'
[tion]: pronounced as in 'attention'
[c/ç]: pronounced as in 'ici'
perfect tense: a verb tense that describes completed actions in the past e.g. I listened, you played
inversion: when the subject pronoun and the verb switch place to form a question

Common mistakes

When forming an inversion question in the perfect tense, the past participle comes after 'avoir'.

When forming an inversion question in the perfect tense, only the verb avoir and the subject swap. The past participle remains at the end: as-tu commencé ?

For parents, carers and teachers

Once pupils have prepared questions for their school project, ask volunteers to present their 'school report' to the class, as Amir did in task B1. Use task B1 as a model answer on the board.