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Year 9 - French

The French colonial empire: perfect tense with verbs like 'venir' and 'entendre'

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', 'venir' and 'mettre' in the perfect tense, including with inversion, to talk about French colonial history.

Key Notes

[on] is pronounced as in 'non' and [om] is pronounced as in 'nom'. They become non-nasal before a vowel e.g. 'colonial'.
To form the past participles of verbs like 'entendre' and 'venir', remove -re/ir from the infinitive, add the ending -u.
With verbs like 'mettre', remove -ettre from the infinitive and add -is.
Turn perfect tense sentences into questions by inverting the subject and auxiliary verb and adding a hyphen.
Add -t- between il/elle and the verb to create a liaison.

Vocabulary To Learn

past participle: verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb
inversion question: when the subject pronoun and the verb switch place to form a question

Common Mistakes To Avoid

When forming inversion questions in the perfect tense, you just have to swap the subject and the verb.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

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

[on] is pronounced as in 'non' and [om] is pronounced as in 'nom'. They become non-nasal before a vowel e.g. 'colonial'. To form the past participles of verbs like 'entendre' and 'venir', remove -re/ir from the infinitive, add the ending -u.

2. Define this key language word and use it in context. 'past participle'

verb form that forms the perfect tense, together with the auxiliary verb. Say or write it in a short sentence so you use the word actively.

3. Correct this common language-learning mistake.

Mistake: When forming inversion questions in the perfect tense, you just have to swap the subject and the verb. Correction: Swapping the position of the subject and the verb is an important step in forming inversion questions but remember to add a hyphen and -t- in the third person singular e.g. 'A-t-elle vendu sa maison ?'.

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 9 French guide library.