Verbs, Time, Voice and Mood
Selecting and forming French tenses, infinitives, participles, active and passive voice, conditional relationships and the prescribed subjunctive forms.
How to study A-level French
Establish source and task, extract or organise meaning, select controlled French structures, then check accuracy, register, evidence and interaction.
Core concepts
Concept 1
Tense and aspect locate events and present them as completed, ongoing, habitual, prior, projected or hypothetical.
Exam cue: Establish the time relationship before choosing a tense.
Concept 2
Voice changes the relationship between agent, process and affected participant.
Exam cue: Check auxiliary, participle and agreement as one verb phrase.
Concept 3
Mood expresses relationships such as assertion, possibility, necessity, emotion and hypothesis.
Exam cue: Use the subjunctive because the governing structure requires or licenses it, not merely to appear advanced.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Translating an English tense mechanically.
Guardrail: Do not replace comprehension with keyword matching, French production with literal English transfer, or cultural analysis with undated stereotypes and memorised facts.
Forgetting past-participle agreement in relevant constructions.
Guardrail: Do not replace comprehension with keyword matching, French production with literal English transfer, or cultural analysis with undated stereotypes and memorised facts.
Mixing conditional and imperfect forms in hypothetical clauses.
Guardrail: Do not replace comprehension with keyword matching, French production with literal English transfer, or cultural analysis with undated stereotypes and memorised facts.
Memory anchors
Tense
Tense locates a situation in time through a grammatical verb form.
Aspect
Aspect presents how a situation unfolds or is viewed in time.
Auxiliary
An auxiliary combines with a participle or infinitive to build a verb construction.
Voice
Voice organises the relationship between action, agent and affected participant.
Subjunctive
The subjunctive is a mood selected in prescribed contexts involving non-asserted or evaluated propositions.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
Complete: « Chaque semaine, elle ___ au marché. »
Complete: « Quand j'étais petit, nous ___ près de Lille. »
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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