Ma ville avant : imperfect of être, avoir and faire
I can talk about what my town used to be like in the past using the imperfect tense of regular and irregular verbs.
Ma ville avant : imperfect of être, avoir and faire
I can talk about what my town used to be like in the past using the imperfect tense of regular and irregular verbs.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.
These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.
Lesson details
Vocabulary and transcripts for this lessons
Key learning points
- 'avoir' and 'faire' have regular stems in the imperfect tense: 'av-' and 'fais-'.
- 'être' has an irregular stem in the imperfect tense: 'ét-'.
- 'être', 'avoir' and 'faire' have regular endings in the imperfect tense: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient
- 'il y avait' is the imperfect tense form of 'il y a', meaning 'there used to be'.
Keywords
Imperfect tense - tense used to describe how things were or used to be in the past, or to say what was happening
Ét- - irregular imperfect stem of être - to be, being
Common misconception
'Être' is used to translate the phrase 'there used to be'.
Although in English, 'there used to be' has the idea of being, this is not the case in French. The phrase 'il y a' means there is but the verb is 'a' which comes from avoir. It's the same with there used to be: 'il y avait'.
To help you plan your year 10 french lesson on: Ma ville avant : imperfect of être, avoir and faire, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 10 french lesson on: Ma ville avant : imperfect of être, avoir and faire, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 4 french lessons from the My neighbourhood: Là où j'habite unit, dive into the full secondary french curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
Mini whiteboards and pens are useful if available.
Licence
Lesson video
Loading...
Some of our videos, including non-English language videos, do not have captions.
Starter quiz
6 Questions
brown
red
glasses
hair
crazy
worried
-ais
-ait
-ions
-iez
-aient
Exit quiz
5 Questions
more (of)
to remember
however
less (of)
full