French · Chapter 10 · Lesson 6 · Grammar primer
Passe compose vs imparfait
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
Imparfait sets the stage, passé composé acts
The bedrock of French narration is one sentence carrying both tenses. The ongoing background goes in the imparfait and the event that cuts across it goes in the passé composé. Quand je suis arrivé, Marie dormait: my arrival is the event, her sleeping is the scenery.
Quand je suis arrivé, Marie dormait.
Some verbs change meaning with the tense
A handful of common verbs mean different things in each past tense, and that is semantic work, not style. Je connaissais Marie is I knew her; j'ai connu Marie is I met her. Je savais is I knew, j'ai su is I found out. Vouloir, pouvoir, avoir and devoir all shift the same way.
J'ai connu ma femme en 2010.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.
Lesson 6 of 10 in this chapter