Past Perfect Tense - Regular Verbs
When to use it: For describing what has happened, what someone has done or what happenend in the past.
How to form it: You need to remember that there are two parts to a perfect tense verb - the auxiliary verb and the past participle.
The auxiliary verb shows who or what did the action and the past participle shows what happened.
Here the auxiliary verb is avoir. For regular -er verbs, the past participleis formed by replacing the -er ending of the infinitive with -é.
e.g. travailler > travaillé:
j'ai travaillé = I worked
tu as travaillé = you worked
il a travaillé = he worked
nous avons travaillé = we worked
vous avez travaillé = you worked
ils ont travaillé = they worked
Notice that the past participle does not change.
It is the auxiliary verb that changes.
In a similar way to -er verbs, we can alter regular -ir and -re verbs.
Form -ir verbs by taking the -ir off the end of the infinitive and adding -i.
Form -re verbs by replacing the -re of the inifinitive with -u.
Examples:
j'ai joué = I played
nous avons choisi = we chose
ils ont perdu = they lost
tu as regardé = you watched
elles ont fini = they finished
vous avez quitté = you left
How to form it: You need to remember that there are two parts to a perfect tense verb - the auxiliary verb and the past participle.
The auxiliary verb shows who or what did the action and the past participle shows what happened.
Here the auxiliary verb is avoir. For regular -er verbs, the past participleis formed by replacing the -er ending of the infinitive with -é.
e.g. travailler > travaillé:
j'ai travaillé = I worked
tu as travaillé = you worked
il a travaillé = he worked
nous avons travaillé = we worked
vous avez travaillé = you worked
ils ont travaillé = they worked
Notice that the past participle does not change.
It is the auxiliary verb that changes.
In a similar way to -er verbs, we can alter regular -ir and -re verbs.
Form -ir verbs by taking the -ir off the end of the infinitive and adding -i.
Form -re verbs by replacing the -re of the inifinitive with -u.
Examples:
j'ai joué = I played
nous avons choisi = we chose
ils ont perdu = they lost
tu as regardé = you watched
elles ont fini = they finished
vous avez quitté = you left