KS3 · French · Year 9

Work experience: modals 3rd person plural

Future plans and work experience: 2-verb phrases with 'aller', modals, 'il faut'

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Your learning goal

I can use present tense modal verbs in all forms and with negation to talk about work experience.

1 of 9

Work experience: modals 3rd person plural: 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.

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What you’ll learn

I can use present tense modal verbs in all forms and with negation to talk about work experience.

Key learning points

For third person plural forms of modal verbs 'vouloir', 'devoir', 'pouvoir' and 'savoir', add -ent to the stem.
The stems of 'devoir' and 'pouvoir' are their singular stems 'doi' and 'peu' plus 'v'; 'doiv-' and 'peuv-'.
The stem of 'vouloir' is singular stem 'veu' plus 'l'; 'veul-'.
The stem of 'savoir' is 'sav', the same as its other plural 'nous' and 'vous' forms.
To make a sentence with two or more verbs negative, add 'ne … pas' around the first verb.

Words to know

3rd person plural: form of pronouns and verbs used to refer to 'they'
negation: two elements, e.g. 'ne … pas', around the main verb expressing negative meaning

Common mistakes

All modal verbs follow the same pattern in the 3rd person plural.

'Devoir' and 'pouvoir' are formed the same way, 'vouloir' is the same with the addition of an 'l' instead of a 'v' and 'savoir' is different; it follows the same pattern as the 'nous'/'vous' forms.

For parents, carers and teachers

If the full translation in task A2b is too challenging or there is not enough time, you could provide students with the English for the first paragraph, providing some context, leaving plenty of practice of the key grammar point.