Practice Makes Perfect

1. 

The pronoun ils replaces masculine beings or things, or masculine and feminine beings 

or things combined.

2. 

The pronoun elles replaces feminine beings or things only.

Verb categories

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Regular verbs. The conjugation of these verbs follows a fixed pattern. Once you learn this 

pattern, you can conjugate each verb within one group (-er, -ir, or -re verbs). With regu-

lar verbs, the stem of the infinitive remains intact during the conjugation, and all verbs 

within one group have the same endings.

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Irregular verbs. The conjugation of each of these verbs does not follow a fixed pattern 

and therefore must be memorized.

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Auxiliaries. These verbs (avoir and être in French) are also called helping verbs because 

they help to build a compound tense.

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