KS3 · French · Year 9
Simultaneous events: perfect and imperfect tenses together
Ongoing past events: imperfect tense
Learn it. Recall it. Make it stick.
IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/8
Your learning goal
I can use the perfect and imperfect tenses together, including within 'est-ce que' structures to describe simultaneous events.
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Simultaneous events: perfect and imperfect tenses together: 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 perfect and imperfect tenses together, including within 'est-ce que' structures to describe simultaneous events.
Key learning points
- [r] is pronounced as in 'rue'. It is different to English 'r'.
- Use the perfect tense for one-off past actions and the imperfect for things that used to happen regularly.
- Use the imperfect tense to express the past continuous 'was -ing'.
- Use the perfect + imperfect tenses together with a conjunction to describe what happened when you were doing something.
- Use 'est-ce que' in the imperfect tense with its usual structure to ask about 2 things happening at the same time.
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
Common mistakes
[r] is the same as the English 'r' sound.
[r] in French is a raspier sound, produced in the back of the throat, which you can practise.
For parents, carers and teachers
- For speaking task C2, the task would work even better with students sat facing back to back with the partner forming full French sentences looking away from the board.