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Year 9 - French

The French colonial empire: more practice of verbs like 'entendre' and 'venir'

Historical events: perfect tense

Unit Summary

In this unit, pupils consolidate the perfect tense with a range of known grammar and vocabulary. A key focus is revisiting prepositions of place and movement, consolidating past participle knowledge and contrasting present and perfect tenses.Inversion questions are also practised.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to use verbs like 'entendre' and 'venir' in the present and perfect tenses in the context of French colonisation, including in information questions.

Key Notes

  • [un/um] is pronounced as in 'un' (a). [un/um] becomes non-nasal before a vowel e.g. 'unité'.
  • Verbs like 'entendre' are similar in the present/perfect tenses but verbs like 'venir' are very different.
  • Listen for an auxiliary verb to identify the tense, only the perfect tense has an auxiliary verb.
  • Add question words to the start of a sentence to ask an information question.
  • There is no subject-verb inversion when 'qui' is the first word of clause.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • perfect tense: a verb tense that describes completed actions in the past e.g. 'I said', 'she played'
  • information question: question starting with a wh- word that has more information in the answer than yes/no

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • The verbs 'entendre' and 'venir' have the same auxiliary verb.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

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

[un/um] is pronounced as in 'un' (a). [un/um] becomes non-nasal before a vowel e.g. 'unité'. Verbs like 'entendre' are similar in the present/perfect tenses but verbs like 'venir' are very different.

2. Define this key language word and use it in context. 'perfect tense'

a verb tense that describes completed actions in the past e.g. 'I said', 'she played'. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.

3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.

Mistake: The verbs 'entendre' and 'venir' have the same auxiliary verb. Correction: Although their past participles are formed in the same way (ending in u), 'venir' is always formed with the auxiliary verb 'être' and never with 'avoir'.

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 9 French guide library.