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Year 10 - French

Une écrivaine francophone: perfect tense verbs like ouvrir, écrire & traduire

Lifestyle and wellbeing: Des personnalités francophones

Unit Summary

This unit focuses on communicating in the perfect tense, revisiting regular and irregular past participle formation, verbs with être and past participle agreement. Pupils will meet the past participles of verbs like ouvrir, écrire and traduire, and revisit perfect tense questions and negation.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to write in the perfect tense, using a range of verbs with avoir and être and with different types of past participle, to describe the past life and writings of a Francophone writer.

Key Notes

  • The past participles of verbs like ouvrir become ouvert, e.g. je découvre in the perfect tense becomes j'ai découvert.
  • The past participles of verbs like traduire become traduit, e.g. tu détruis in the perfect tense becomes tu as détruit.
  • The past participles of verbs like écrire become écrit, e.g. elle décrit becomes in the perfect tense elle a décrit.
  • Past participles used with être must agree in gender and number with the subject of the verb.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • auxiliary verb: a form of 'avoir' or 'être' used to form the perfect tense
  • past participle agreement: when the past participle matches the subject in gender and number

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • Only irregular verbs such as 'faire' and 'avoir' have unusual past participles.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

1. Explain what you can now say or understand in this lesson.

The past participles of verbs like ouvrir become ouvert, e.g. je découvre in the perfect tense becomes j'ai découvert. The past participles of verbs like traduire become traduit, e.g. tu détruis in the perfect tense becomes tu as détruit.

2. Define this key language word and use it in context. 'auxiliary verb'

a form of 'avoir' or 'être' used to form the perfect tense. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.

3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.

Mistake: Only irregular verbs such as 'faire' and 'avoir' have unusual past participles. Correction: Verbs like 'ouvrir', 'traduire' and 'écrire' form their past participles differently to regular IR and RE verbs and should be seen as different types of verb when learning verb patterns.

More Lessons In This Unit

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