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Tag Archives: passé composé

Line by Line Lesson: “Le droit à l’erreur” by Amel Bent Posted by on Mar 10, 2016

Don’t you love it when a song you hadn’t heard in a long time comes on and you can sing along like a pro? This recently happened to me with a song I listened to when I started learning French. I didn’t know the lyrics well – it was always a song I had on…

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How to Easily Understand the French “Passé Composé” Posted by on Nov 1, 2012

We’ll try in today’s post to shed some light on the different uses of a special French grammatical tense called “le passé composé” —That way, you won’t be feeling too “tense” about it anymore! Actually, linguists nowadays prefer to speak of a “tiroir verbal” (literally “verbal drawer”) instead of un temps grammatical. And what was called for…

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Le passé composé in French Posted by on Sep 29, 2011

“Passé composé“… Two distinct words when coupled together can saw a bit of confusion in the minds of many, many, helpless new French learners! Qu’à cela ne tienne (nevermind), we’ll try in today’s post to shed some light on the different uses of this type of grammatical tense – so you won’t feel too “tense”…

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L’imparfait… rhymes with DMCV! Posted by on Nov 6, 2010

Dieu merci, c’est vendredi! “Thank God it’s Friday” Let’s start with l’imparfait, and see what we can do about DMCV. II. L’imparfait L’imparfait is used for an ongoing state of being (e.g., being young: “When I was young…”) or a repeated or incomplete action. It’s used for actions that did not end at a specific point…

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Le passé composé Posted by on Oct 28, 2010

I started studying French in middle school, and by 8th grade, I thought had learned everything. All I needed was a little more vocabulary, and I’d be fluent. Then I came into class one day, and my teacher said, Alors la classe, aujourd’hui on va commencer le passé composé, a form of past tense. Past…

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