GCSE French: Verbs and Tenses

Ten sentences with the verb missing. The questions are in English and the French is in the sentence, so what is being tested is whether you know which tense the sentence is asking for — which is where the marks on the writing paper actually go.

Five of them are the choices students get wrong every year. A Saturday habit in childhood takes the imperfect, and the perfect is there for anyone who reaches for it because the event is over. A sister who went to Paris takes être, and the participle agrees, so three of the four options are wrong in three different ways. A si clause with the imperfect takes the conditional in the other half, and the future sits beside it looking almost right. A phone rings while somebody is watching television: the imperfect sets the scene and the perfect interrupts it. And the present of faire with vous is faites, which has to be learned rather than worked out.

Two questions run the other way, from French into English, because these are the two structures where French uses a tense English does not. "J'apprends le français depuis trois ans" is a present tense in French and a perfect in English — I have been learning, not I learned — and the version that puts it firmly in the past is offered. "Je viens de finir mes devoirs" is not about coming anywhere; it is the way French says I have just finished.

One question is worth explaining, because it was rewritten after an automatic check caught something real. "Demain, nous ... visiter le musée" was originally set as a near-future question with "irons" among the wrong answers — except that "Demain, nous irons visiter le musée" is perfectly good French, the simple future of aller with an infinitive after it. Two options completed the sentence correctly, which is not a question. It now names the tense it is asking for, offers four forms of aller of which only one agrees with nous in the present, and says in the explanation that the future version is also correct, so that a learner meets the point rather than a trap.

Every French form here has been checked by hand, accents included, and each explanation gives the English of the whole sentence so the meaning can be verified rather than guessed. Nothing is reproduced from any exam board specification, past paper or mark scheme; every sentence is an ordinary classroom example.

Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with any exam board and it is not an exam centre.

• Choose the imperfect for a repeated habit in the past
• Use être and agree the participle in the perfect tense
• Form the near future with the present of aller and an infinitive
• Use the simple future of an irregular verb after a future time marker
• Put the conditional in the main clause of a si sentence
• Translate depuis with a present tense into an English perfect
• Recognise venir de with an infinitive as the immediate past
• Write a reflexive verb correctly in the perfect tense
• Combine the imperfect and the perfect in a narrative
• Conjugate faire in the present with vous

Ten classroom sentences with a verb missing or a meaning to be given: football every Saturday in childhood, a sister in Paris yesterday, a museum tomorrow, Spain next year, a new car if there were more money, three years of learning French, homework just finished, somebody who got up early, a phone that rang during a television programme, and sport at the weekend. Eleven flashcards carry the verb forms — the present of faire, être and avoir, the perfect with avoir and with être, the imperfect, the near and simple futures, the conditional, depuis with the present, venir de with an infinitive.