Year 10 have been looking at the imperfect.
- What is the imperfect?
It is a tense used in the past.
- We have done the perfect. It is used in the past as well. What is the difference?
The imperfect describe an action in the past. You would use was or were in English. (The weather was nice. They were lots of beaches to explore)
It could also something that you used to do ( I used to play a lot of sport when I was your age. I did not use to watch telly all the time.)
- How do you form the imperfect tense?
You need to look at the present tense of the verb that you want to use so for I used to play, you would look at to play= jouer in the present tense: Je joue etc. Then look at the nous form- nous jouons. When you have this, remove the nous and the -ons. You are left with the stem jou-
Use this to conjugate your verb and add the following endings:
je-ais, tu-ais, il/elle/on-ait,nous-ions,vous-iez, ils/elles-aient
- Do all the the verb follow this pattern?
Nearly all of them. To be: être is the only exception- You use the stem ét- instead.
- Can we have some examples?
faire --- nous faisons. Remove nous and ons and conjugate
je faisais
tu faisais
il/elle/on faisait
nous faisions
vous faisiez
ils/elles faisaient
Now listen to this song. It is quite an old song but it tells the story of a young man who used to buy a pain au chocolat every morning at the bakery's. The young lady behind the counter was in love with him ......
Look at the worksheets below- You listen and complete with the appropriate missing verb. You can also cut the sentences and put them in the right order. I am also including the lyrics. To follow up make a cartoon of the song, you can use toondoon or Go animate.
Petit pain au chocolat- differentiated - The lyrics
