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Irregular verbs follow their own patterns and must be learnt separately
Perfect Tense (1) – something which happened in the past
13 verbs form their perfect tense with être (usually involving movement /
change of state):
Je suis nous sommes
tu es vous êtes
il/elle/on est ils/elles sont
N.B. With être verbs in the perfet tense, add –e to the past participle for
feminine, add –s for plural and add –es for feminine plural
Imperfect Tense
The imperfect tense can be used to describe what things were like in the
past, what was happening at a given moment and what used to happen
To form the imperfect tense you take the ‘nous’ form of the present
tense, remove the ‘ons’ and add the endings.
Imperfect tense endings are as follows:
For être (to be) the imperfect endings are added onto the stem ét-
e.g J’ étais triste – I was sad
C’était chouette – It was great
Pluperfect Tense
The pluperfect tense is used to report events that took place before another
event in the past / something that had happened. It is made up of 2 parts:
Nous avons passé les vacances dans We spent the holidays at a campsite
un camping en France. Mon père in France. My father had booked a
avait réservé un bon emplacement good pitch
It is formed with:
The present tense of the verb aller
+
The infinitive of the main verb
aller
je vais nous allons
tu vas vous allez
il/elle/on va ils/elles vont
Future Tense
This is used to talk about what will happen in the future
e.g. je regarderai
N.B leave off the final –e of the infinitive when using re verbs