Practice Makes Perfect

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There are several forms that can be used to talk about the past in French. The most 

common is the passé composé, called in English the compound past or the pres-

ent perfect. The passé composé is one of the tenses colloquially used in French to 

talk about past events. It refers to a single action in the past. It is built of two parts: 

the auxiliary or helping verb, avoir or être, 1 a past participle.

The past participle of regular verbs

The past participle is formed by adding an ending to the verb stem. Regular past 

participles take the following endings:

-er verbs take -é: parler (to speak) 



 

parlé (spoken)

-ir verbs take -i: choisir (to choose) 



choisi (chosen)

-re verbs take -u: entendre (to hear) 



entendu (heard)

Note that the passé composé can be translated into English in different ways. 

Its English equivalent depends on the context.

   

She made a decision.

Elle a pris une décision. 

   



     She has made a decision.

   

She did make a decision.

In the negative form, ne (n’) is placed in front of avoir or être, and pas after