21 topics
French help, from verb tenses to pronoun order
Most French marks are lost in one place: choosing between the passé composé and the imparfait. The textbook rule about completed actions is not wrong, but it is unusable in the middle of a paragraph, because the same event can take either tense depending on what the sentence is doing with it. That choice, plus être agreement and where the pronouns go, is where the marks actually live.
Where students get stuck
Passé composé or imparfait? I guess every time
Stop asking whether the action finished. Ask what job the verb is doing in the story. The imparfait paints the background — weather, age, ongoing states, what used to happen repeatedly. The passé composé is the foreground: the events that move the story forward, one after another. Il pleuvait quand je suis sorti — the rain is the scenery, the leaving is the event. If you can put quand or soudain in front of it, it is passé composé. If it answers what things were like, it is imparfait.
Which verbs take être, and why does the ending change?
The être verbs are almost all verbs of coming, going, and changing state: aller, venir, arriver, partir, entrer, sortir, monter, descendre, rester, tomber, naître, mourir, devenir, plus all reflexives. With être, the past participle agrees with the subject like an adjective: elle est allée, ils sont partis, elles sont venues. With avoir there is no subject agreement at all — j'ai mangé never changes. The trap is the reflexive: elle s'est lavée agrees, but elle s'est lavé les mains does not, because the hands are the direct object and they come after the verb.
Le, la, lui, y, en — I can never get the order right
Object pronouns in French sit before the verb, not after it, and they go in a fixed order: me/te/se/nous/vous, then le/la/les, then lui/leur, then y, then en. Je le lui donne. Il y en a. The order never changes, so learn the column, not the sentence. The other half of the problem is choosing between le and lui: verbs that take a direct object use le/la/les, and verbs built with à — parler à, téléphoner à, répondre à — use lui/leur. Je lui téléphone, never je le téléphone.
When is the subjonctif actually triggered?
The subjonctif is not a tense and it is not about doubt in general. It is triggered by a specific list of expressions followed by que: il faut que, vouloir que, bien que, pour que, avant que, avoir peur que, and the negative or interrogative of penser and croire. Learn the triggers, not the feeling. Je pense qu'il vient is indicative; je ne pense pas qu'il vienne is subjonctif. And if there is no change of subject, there is no que and no subjonctif at all — je veux partir, not je veux que je parte.
Gender feels random and I keep getting adjectives wrong
Gender is mostly predictable from the ending, and the endings are worth memorising once: -tion, -té, -ette, -ance, -ence and -ure are feminine; -age, -ment, -eau, -isme and -eur on a job title are masculine. Then adjective agreement follows the noun, and placement matters. Most adjectives go after the noun, but the short common ones — beau, nouveau, bon, grand, petit, jeune, vieux, joli — go before it. A few change meaning by position: un ancien professeur is a former teacher, un professeur ancien is an elderly one.
What's covered
French topics you can work through with a tutor, generate practice on, or turn into flashcards and a study plan.
Verb tenses and moods
- Present tense of -er, -ir and -re verbs
- Passé composé with avoir and with être
- Imparfait and the imparfait/passé composé contrast
- Futur proche and futur simple
- Conditionnel and si clauses
- Présent du subjonctif and its triggers
Sentence structure
- Negation: ne...pas, ne...jamais, ne...que, ne...personne
- Question forms: est-ce que, inversion, and intonation
- Direct and indirect object pronouns and their order
- The pronouns y and en
- Relative pronouns qui, que, dont and où
Nouns, articles and adjectives
- Gender patterns and plural forms
- Definite, indefinite and partitive articles
- De after a negative and after expressions of quantity
- Adjective agreement and placement before or after the noun
- Comparative and superlative forms
Speaking and writing tasks
- Oral presentation and spontaneous conversation
- Formal and informal register: tu, vous and letter openings
- Text analysis and compréhension écrite questions
- Structured writing: production écrite and the paragraph plan
- Listening for verb endings in rapid speech
French questions
Can I actually practise speaking French, or is it all typed?
You can hold the conversation out loud in French with the voice tutor and it answers you in French, then tells you in plain terms what tripped you up — a wrong auxiliary, a missing agreement, an English word order. It is a conversation partner that will stop and explain, not a scoring machine, so there is no accent grade attached to it.
Will it write my production écrite for me?
No, and handing in French it wrote would be obvious to your teacher anyway, because the vocabulary would run ahead of everything else you have submitted. What it will do is take your own draft and give rubric-based feedback on it: where the tense choice breaks down, which agreements are missing, and where the connecting words are doing no work.
I can conjugate on a worksheet but I freeze in oral exams. Does that help?
That gap is normal, and it is a retrieval-speed problem rather than a knowledge one. Repeated live conversation on the exam topics is what closes it, and the arcade games built from your own vocabulary list push the same words into fast recall. Both are aimed at getting the verb out of your mouth before you have finished thinking about it.
Can it help with French immersion coursework, not just core French?
Yes. Immersion work is usually a subject taught in French rather than a French course, so the difficulty is reading a history or science text in a second language. You can share the page on camera and work through it in French, or switch to English for the concept and back to French for the writing.
Stuck on french right now?
Talk it through out loud, share your screen, and watch it worked out step by step on a whiteboard.
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