(When I was in high school, I studied every day. Je lisais les journaux régulièrement et je commentais constamment l’actualité en compagnie de mes amis.
Je voulais être accepté dans une grande école parce que je souhaitais être politicien. Quand j’étais lycéen, j’étudiais tous les jours. To give you an idea of how these tenses work, together and separately, here are three similar stories using each past tense individually and then both together. … when the passé composé interrupted with news of some occurrence. Imparfait describes what was happening or how something was … J’étais à l’école … Passé composé reports a change in a state of being, a new feeling. Imparfait indicates an ongoing state of being or feeling.
Passé composé expresses what happened a specific number of times. Imparfait details what used to happen on a regular basis, or happened an indefinite number of times. Passé composé announces what happened, actions that were completed. Imparfait explains what was happening, with no indication of when or even if it ended. In a nutshell, the imparfait is used for incomplete actions while the passé composé is reserved for completed ones, but of course it’s more complicated than that. Understanding the contrasting relationship between the passé composé and imparfait is essential to communicating in French. Be sure you fully understand these two French tenses before continuing with this lesson.įor French students, the trickiest aspect of these French verb forms is that they often work together, juxtaposed not only throughout stories, but even within individual sentences. As for the passé composé, it has three English equivalents. While l’imparfait is more or less equivalent to the English past progressive, l’imparfait is more widely used, especially with verbs like avoir and être. The most important French past tenses are the passé composé and the imparfait, and they can be difficult for several reasons.