File - Mme. Danielle Boston

Les verbes – Passé composé
We’ve already established how useful verbs are, and how you can use them to say “I am doing something”, “I do
something”, or “Do I do something?” using the same words!1
But, what happens if you’re talking about something that already happened?
If we want to say “I did something” or “did I do something?” then we need to use the past tense. The simplest form of
this is called the “passé composé”, and it describes a single action in the past that has finished completely.
Luckily, the biggest part of this tense is something that we already know really really really well:
avoir + être in the present tense!!!
Just like the name “passé composé”, the passé composé is made up of TWO different parts, or words.
These are: avoir/être in the present tense2, and a past participle (complicated name, it sounds hard – really isn’t!)
First, let’s remind ourselves of the present tense of avoir and être:
avoir
être
je
tu
il/elle
nous
vous
ils/elles
Très bien! Now for the super tricky part....
The endings of the three major verb groups are ER, RE and IR
We have to change these verb endings to make a past participle3. We do this by making:
ER  É
Eg., manger  mangé.
IR  IT
RE  U
finir  finit
vendre  vendu
Change the following verbs into their past participles using the above rules:
1
Je fais quelquechose
2
If you were really wondering, être and avoir don’t really mean “to be” and “to have” in the same way when they are part of the passé composé – they are called
“auxiliary verbs” or “helper verbs” because they just help us to make the past tense.
3
There are some that don’t follow the pattern, called irregular past participles. We will have to memorise them later.
Parler: ___________
Dormir: ___________ Achétèr__________
Arriver ___________
Aller : __________
Rendre: ____________
Très bien!
Ok, on y va Let’s put these two ideas together.
Fill in this table using the correct form of avoir and a past participle made from the verb like in the example:
Subject
j’/je
avoir
past participle
verb
French/English
ai
mangé
manger
j’ai mangé – I ate.
tu
parler
il/elle
nous
vous
ils/elles
finir
visiter
vendre
chanter
Très bien! You can construct the past tense using avoir. Write down the following sentences in either English or French:
I ate the cake
__________________________________
You (plural) sang a song
__________________________________
Nous avons vendu la maison __________________________________
Jean-Luc a étudié le français __________________________________
Hmmm… hang on, didn’t I say you needed to use être somewhere??
The majority of verbs use avoir to make the passé composé. There are, however, a group that use être. The rules for
these ones are a little bit different. They involve a beautiful castle in the far away land of Grammaire (never too far
from our thoughts, of course!) This is called the “Castle of être” (original, I know).
First, a little background....
Notice how all of the verbs above seem to involve something else besides the verb and the subject? (I ate the cake, You
sang the song etc.). These are called transitive verbs because they contain an object. Some verbs don’t have another
object involved, and these are called intransitive verbs (don’t worry about remembering the names, just remember the
concept!) For example, “I arrived”. I can’t ‘arrive the cake’... I just.... arrive. There’s nothing else involved. This means that
it is an intransitive verb and has to use être. Most intransitive verbs are about ‘movement’ (go, come, leave...)
Now, back to that castle....
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An easy way to try and remember the verbs that use ÊTRE is to imagine the Castle of Être. When you live in the castle,
various life events take place... each of these uses an “être verb”
Draw the castle:
It needs at least two towers, and big walls with some stairs!!
VERBIES
naître – to be born
Now draw in your life movements and label the être verbs (stick figures are ok)
You are born in the castle (and if you grow up there, ultimately, sadly you may also die in the castle). You can go to the
castle or leave the castle. If you like you can remain forever or stay for a little while after you enter. If you do go out,
you should make sure that you return before it becomes dark. You can climb the walls, but make sure that you don’t fall
off because strange things happen in this castle! It’s better if you just go down the castle steps safely. Maybe rest a
little on the way down if you get tired.
Alternatively, you can hang out in the Tower of Reflexives. It’s always crowded there!!
Phew! What a busy castle!
There’s just one rule for all of these être past participles – they have to agree with the subject of the verb the same
way your adjectives might.
(Avoir past participles don’t agree with the subject!!)
So, if you want to say “I went” then you need to choose from Je suis allée or Je suis allé depending on if you’re female
or male. If there’s more than one person involved, and “we went”, then we pick from Nous sommes allés or Nous
sommes allées. “She went” always has to be Elle est allée and “he went” always has to be Il est allé..
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Write the following sentences in French:
I went to school
_______________________________________
I came to the party
___________________________________
He was born* in 1953
___________________________________
They went out last night
___________________________________
You (pl) fell down
___________________________________
*irregular – see below
And these in English:
Nous sommes partis vers 14h
_______________________________
Nous sommes nés en 1995
_______________________________
Elle est descendue de l’autobus
_______________________________
Elles sont sorties samedi
_______________________________
Je suis venue à 15h
_______________________________
Parfait!
The last thing that you need to know is that some verbs have irregular past participles. Here is a list of some (there are
patterns, and verbs stemming from verbs act the same way). You should add more as you come across them:
étre  été
mettre  mis
conduire  conduit
vouloir  voulu
rire  ri
prendre  pris
construire  construit
ouvrir  ouvert
sourire  souri
apprendre  appris
produire  produit
offrir  offert
suffire  suffi
comprendre  compris
traduire  traduit
naître  né
suivre  suivi
dire  dit
faire  fait
acquérir  acquis
écrire  écrit
connaître  connu
conquérir  conquis
décrire  décrit
tenir  tenu
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