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.
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.
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The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
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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
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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