I recently wrote a post with 5 suggested guidelines for teaching question forms in French. As with that post, here I'm going to suggest 10 guidelines for approaching the passé composé in French. Remember, these cannot be hard and fast rules, just suggestions based on my experience over many years and which may be justifiable with research in mind. My views on this are bound to be coloured by the fact I taught mainly higher aptitude, generally highly motivated pupils, but even in the settings I taught in there were plenty of pupils who struggled with languages.
Firstly, I've chosen the perfect tense since it us undoubtedly one of the hardest areas for students to both understand (declarative knowledge) and use fluently and accurately (procedural knowledge). Remember that it's procedural knowledge we are after. Understanding the rules is one thing, using them is another.
In cognitive load theory terms the perfect tense is hard to grasp since it has many of what are called interacting elements: use of an auxiliary with a past partciple, different auxiliaries (avoir and être), irregular past participles and three types of regular participles. In addition, it can generally be translated in at least three ways in English. For instance, il a joué could translate as he played, he has played or he has been playing. Then of course we have the reflexive verb forms, past participle agreement and even preceding direct object agreement (la porte qu'elle a fermée). (The last two only seriously affect written forms and are not a priority at all.)
Phonologically speaking, the tense is problematic since many English-speaking students will struggle to perceive the difference between je and j'ai. The difference may seem clear to our ears, but it isn't for many learners. (Dr Kedi Simpson's PhD thesis on listening revealed how hard students can find apparently simple phonemic distinctions.)
In addition, when it comes to written forms, the spellings 'é' (on the past participle) and 'er' (infinitive endings) sound the same, so both L1 French users and our students often make mistakes with these.
So, when put like this, you can see what challenge this tense presents. But we can't avoid practising it since it is so high-frequency and useful.
What guidelines can I offer when it comes to teaching this tense?
First, do not try to teach it all at once. This may seem obvious, but there may be some teachers out there who would be tempted to do this. Why would I discourage this? Firstly, even if some very smart pupils could understand the whole thing (in terms of declarative knowledge — being able to explain it), they would not be able to turn this knowledge into fluent use.
So my rule 1 would be, begin with regular avoir verbs. In addition, choose high-frequency verbs which present no extra phonological challenge. For example, I would avoid verbs beginning with vowels (e.g. écouter, aimer, adorer). Hearing il a aimé, elle a écouté, on a adoré present a perception and processing problem. The auxiliary 'a' (or 'ai') is not clearly distinguishable from the start of the past participle. So good verbs would be regular ones starting with consonants jouer, visiter, regarder, dessiner, toucher). They all begin with clearly perceptible consonants and the 'é' sound at the end.
My rule 2 is a bit controversial. I would begin by focusng on the 3rd person singular (e.g. il a joué, elle a visité). These are easier to perceive becauser of that problem I mentioned above — the hard to perceive difference between 'j'ai' and 'je'. We know from experience that students often say things like je joué, j'ai joue, mixing up present with past. Now, what mainly prevents this long term is simple quantity of input and use. Students hear and see multiple uses of j'ai joué but never je joué (though they do hear je jouais which is another problem). Through statistical learning, like a Gen AI tool, they acquire the correct forms. BUT, if we avoid sowing confusion in the very first place by focusing on the easier to perceive 3rd person, this may in small part help longer term. We may stop errors becoming fossilised.
Now, I said this was controversial, since in general we tend to encourage a lot of use on 1st person, and this is what students mostly use in exams and in daily usage. But if you accept my argument above, you might go along with my reasoning! This may not be a deal breaker!!
Rule 3: recycle to the maximum and build fluency. I've combined two in one here really. Let students hear lots of examples of similar patterns, using a small range of easy verbs, keeping the focus on third and first person. Let them use tu but don't dwell on vous (less useful) Try to get to the point where classes can just use these verb forms in simple utterances without having to analyse what they are doing. Repeated, chunked language through short narrative texts, easy dialogues, sentence builders, question-answer sequences, phrases with pictures — whatever it takes. Use aural and written forms. Recycle to the maximum. Flood the input. Build fluency through specific fluency tasks, getting students to use the new tense under some time pressure. Tasks like: How many past tense sentences can you do in one minute?
Rule 4: interleave the perfect tense with the present tense. In most cases, classes will have begun their French using the present tense. This makes sense. It is the highest frequency tense. Now they are hearing, seeing and using the perfect tense. The danger is that every verb now becomes a perfect tense one! So after, say, a very few lessons focused on perfect tense, create activities which force students to contrast present and past. Simple exercises like: Is this past or present? Listen to these three sentences — which one is past? Simple translations (I play; I played). Drills like changing a present tense verb phrase to a past tense one.
Rule 5: leave être auxiliary verbs until later and only focus on reflexives with faster classes. You will probably be wasting your time working on reflexives with many classes. And even if students make mistakes with être verbs, saying things like j'ai allé instead of je suis allé(e), that really isn't a huge deal. many French speakers do the same. That said, je suis allé(e) tends to be a fixed chunk which is easily established through frequent use.
Rule 6: when you start using irregular past participles, focus on higher-frequency verbs, making sure students hear, see and use lots of examples of forms like j'ai vu, j'ai fait, j'ai pris, j'ai été and j'ai eu. (The last two are tricky for phonological reasons.)
Rule 7: don't spend too long on written details like past participle agreements. These have no impact on communication. Only with the strongest classes is it worth dwelling on them.
Rule 8: don't spend much time (if any at all) conjugating whole verbs. You can easily get classes to chant and sing verb paradigms. You might think this is great. But does it translate to usage in longer utterances? Is it an illusion of mastery? I'm not saying it's useless, but is it the best way of spending time? Keep the focus on chunked, connected language. That will transfer more easily to fluent use.
Rule 9: integrate the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Work using each skill will support the others. But keep a strong focus on listening and speaking.
Rule 10. Be patient! Many classes struggle to acquire usage of correct perfect tenses. Even after effective explanations and practice, many students will get these verbs wrong, especially under test pressure. Research is clear that some grammatical constructions take longer to acquire than others. We can't easily short-cut the natural, developmental process of grammar acquisition.
In conclusion, I would add a few points. I have assumed in all this that you are teaching using, to some degree at least, a grammatical syllabus (present first, then past, then future etc). I have argued elsewhere against focusing too much on grammar at the expense of communication. In this case I would suggest that you need to focus on the form of the tense (after all, it's really important), but should try to make tasks as communicative and meaningful as possible. So, rather than an explanation followed by some dry drills, gap-fills or translations, look to use narratives (well suited to the perfect tense), picture sequences, information gap tasks like Battleships or paired diary completion. Make it seem like the perfect tense is being used for useful communicative purposes, not with the purpose of 'learning the next piece of grammar'.
That said, I can recall, with faster classes, making a point of saying "This lesson is really important because we are going to start using a new tense! Cor! Wow!" I know this tickled their fancy and made them focus a little more. Why not do this? Of course, context and class are so important!
So there you go. That's my take on the perfect tense. In some contexts you may not want to dwell very much on it at all. You may be delighted if you class can use a small repertoire of language in just the present tense, and maybe a few set phrases in the perfect tense. That may be fine. Context!
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