How to Teach the Passé Composé

How to teach the passé composé

The passé composé is a form of avoir or être plus a past participle, and the hard part is knowing which verbs take être. This page explains the rule, with a free activity where students tell Sparky about their weekend in French and Sparky asks about movement instead of fixing the verb.

"'It’s like having 20 of you in the room.' That’s what one of my Grade 12 IB French B students said after using Flint to prepare for their Individual Oral. Flint became a space where they could rehearse as much as they wanted, without judgment."

Anthony Daoudi, Upper School French Teacher at The York School

Why this matters

A student who learned "j'ai mangé" first tends to put avoir in front of every verb, so "j'ai allé au cinéma" sounds right to them. On a worksheet the mistake gets a red mark, and in conversation nobody has time to stop and ask why aller is different. The student keeps saying "j'ai allé", and the teacher has to wait for the unit test to find out who still does.

How the passé composé works: avoir or être

The passé composé has two parts: the present tense of avoir or être, and a past participle, as in "j'ai mangé" or "elle est partie" (French Ministry of Education, Eduscol; University of Texas at Austin). Most verbs take avoir. Être goes with a short list of verbs, most of them verbs of coming and going such as aller, partir, arriver, rentrer and tomber, and with every pronominal verb, such as se coucher (University of Texas at Austin). With être, the past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number: "elle est allée", "ils sont arrivés" (University of Texas at Austin). Some verbs of movement, such as marcher and courir, still take avoir, so students need to learn the list itself.

In the Flint activity, each student tells Sparky about their own weekend in French, typed or spoken, and Sparky reads its replies aloud. Unlike a worksheet, Sparky reads the student's own sentence and asks about the verb that student got wrong, without giving the answer.

Sparky gets Chloe to choose être and make the participle agree

Chloe ends up fixing her own auxiliaries and writing "Léa est tombée" with the agreement. Every student gets the same activity and the same opening question, and Sparky's replies depend on what each student says about their weekend.

Sparky repeats Chloe's own verbSparky asks about movement instead of giving the answerA right auxiliary gets a harder question

Chloe

Interest: A weekend trip to see her cousinsStarting point: Uses avoir for every verb

Chloe

ce weekend j'ai allé a lyon pour voir mes cousins. on a pris le train samedi matin

Sparky

Tu as dit « j'ai allé ». Aller, c'est un mouvement d'un endroit à un autre, non ? Quel auxiliaire utilise-t-on avec les verbes de mouvement ?

Chloe

oh c'est être? je suis allée a lyon

Sparky

Oui, exactement ! Et tes cousins, qu'est-ce que vous avez fait ensemble à Lyon ?

Chloe

on a fait du vélo et ma cousine léa a tombé du vélo mais elle va bien

Sparky

Oh non, pauvre Léa ! Tu as dit « a tombé ». Tomber, c'est un verbe de mouvement comme aller et partir. Quel auxiliaire faut-il utiliser ?

Chloe

léa est tombé du vélo

Understanding check

Presque ! Léa est une fille, donc le participe passé doit s'accorder. Comment dit-on « tombé » pour une fille ?

Chose être for aller and tomber, then made the participle agree

Chloe is an example student. She typed her answers, and Sparky's replies are shortened. The chat skips the middle of the conversation, where Chloe fixed "on a sorti" and "on a rentré" the same way.

What Flint did for Chloe

When Chloe wrote "j'ai allé", Sparky repeated her verb and asked whether aller is a movement instead of correcting it.
When she used avoir again with tomber, Sparky compared tomber to aller, the verb she had already fixed.
When Chloe chose être for tomber, Sparky asked her to make "tombé" agree with Léa, and at the end asked for a retell with two être verbs and one reflexive verb.

A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

The activity page shows who still reaches for avoir

While the class works, Needs attention shows the teacher which student keeps using avoir with verbs of movement. After three or more students submit, activity analytics lists what the class did well, where students went wrong, and a follow-up to practice next.

Flint's activity page for the passé composé activity. Needs attention shows that one student has used avoir with a verb of movement four times: j'ai allé, on a sorti, on a rentré and on a allé. Activity analytics says most students switched to être for aller and partir after one question about movement, and 15 students told the whole weekend in the passé composé. 8 students chose être but left the past participle without agreement, as in elle est tombé. The follow-up suggests retelling one moment about a sister or a friend, then adding a reflexive verb. The Sessions table lists three students: two submitted and one still in progress. — Example activity page
After a French 2 class tells Sparky about the weekend
The school and students are made up for this page.

Set up the activity for free

Open the passé composé activity in Flint's public library, select Use activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and assign it to a class. The activity's Language settings set French as the primary language, set students' communication to Writing or speaking so students can type or answer with the microphone, and set Sparky's communication to Writing and speaking (with autoplay) so Sparky reads every reply aloud.

For more world language activities, see Flint for world language.

Start the activity for free