In this aide mémoire, we will provide a brief discussion of the two most common forms of the past tense: passé compose and imparfait.  For a complete review, we recommend the 501 Verbs book by Christopher Kendris.  It has a brief section on the two.  There are other types of past tense uses, but these are more advanced and in another exercise.  Knowing these will help you gain points in the B to low C level of the grammar and oral exams.

Imparfait

To make the imparfait, take the nous form, drop the -ons and add -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient.  The only oddball is être (j’étais, tu étais, il/elle/on était, nous étions, vous étiez, ils/elles étaient).

Imparfait is used in the following situations:

1.  When an action was occurring in the past when another action was also occurring.  Think “was”.    Elle mangeait pendant que je parlais/She was eating while I was speaking.
2. When an action was occurring in the past when another action happened and finished.  Elle mangeait quand je suis parti/She was eating when I left.
3. When talking about something that happened habitually in the past (think of “used to”).  Ils allaient au Texas chaque hiver/ They would go/used to go to Texas every winter.
4. When describing the condition (physical or mental) of something in the past.  Les arbres étaient couverts de neige/ The trees were covered in snow.  Le chien était toujours heureux de le voir/The dog was always happy to see him.
5. In hypothetical situations such as “If I were you, I would do X/ Si j’étais toi, je ferais X”.
6. This last one is tricky and normally found on the hardest parts of the test.  It doesn’t have an English translation that is the same.  Je regardais la télévision depuis une demi-heure quand le feu d’artifice a commencé/I had been watching television for a half hour when the fireworks started.  Note here how in English we say “had been” but in French they use the imparfait.

Passé Composé

To make passé composé, use the present form of avoir and the past participle (-ed form) of the verb (e.g., ends in -é, i, sometimes t).  Remember the VANDERTRAMP rule and for those verbs use être as être will still be used for these verbs, reflexive verbs (e.g., se tenir), and cases with COD (objet de complément direct) issues.  We won’t use the COD in this exercise.  There will be other exercises to study this rule.

Passé compose is used to express:

1. Something that happened in the past and stopped.  Je suis allé au magasin/I went to the store.  Note that aller is a VANDERTRAMP verb.  Another example: J’ai lu le livre/I read the book.  This implies you read it, finished reading, and are doing something else now.  If you said, “I was reading the book” this is imparfait.  This last phrase implies something else happened or was going to happen.
2. The English equivalent to went, did, has gone, has entered, etc.

Sometimes you will see both of these in one phrase.  Here are some examples:

J’ai lu le livre quand j’étais à Paris/I read the book when I was in Paris.  “In Paris” could be seen as a condition or doing an action when another action started and finished (lu).

J’étais en train de me promener, quand elle est arrivée/I was going for a walk, when she arrived.  When she arrived, this is a one time, completed action.  See how -ed appears on arrived while “going for” is a state of being or condition so étais is used.  French don’t use the gerund (-ing words) in this same sense so watch for this on the exam.

Here is the shortcut table.