Ma ville avant : imperfect of être, avoir and faire
I can talk about what my town used to be like in the past using the imperfect tense of regular and irregular verbs.
Ma ville avant : imperfect of être, avoir and faire
I can talk about what my town used to be like in the past using the imperfect tense of regular and irregular verbs.
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Lesson details
Vocabulary and transcripts for this lessons
Key learning points
- 'avoir' and 'faire' have regular stems in the imperfect tense: 'av-' and 'fais-'.
- 'être' has an irregular stem in the imperfect tense: 'ét-'.
- 'être', 'avoir' and 'faire' have regular endings in the imperfect tense: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient
- 'il y avait' is the imperfect tense form of 'il y a', meaning 'there used to be'.
Keywords
Imperfect tense - tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past, or to say what was happening
Ét- - irregular imperfect stem of être - to be, being
Common misconception
'Être' is used to translate the phrase 'there used to be'.
Although in English, 'there used to be' has the idea of being, this is not the case in French. The phrase 'il y a' means there is but the verb is 'a' which comes from avoir. It's the same with there used to be: 'il y avait'.
Equipment
Mini whiteboards and pens are useful if available.
Licence
Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
6 Questions
brown
red
glasses
hair
crazy
worried
-ais
-ait
-ions
-iez
-aient
Assessment exit quiz
5 Questions
more (of)
to remember
however
less (of)
full