Passé composé practice: choose avoir or être, then type the form

Passé composé practice on this page is a short drill with two kinds of question: pick avoir or être for a verb, or type the passé composé form for a subject. Every answer is copied from two Québec references, the Banque de dépannage linguistique of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) and Usito, the Université de Sherbrooke’s online dictionary. It is a practice drill, not an official test, and it gives no score that means anything outside this page. For where the passé composé sits among the other tenses, read French tenses, explained. For when to use it rather than the imparfait, read Imparfait vs passé composé. For why recall practice is worth the effort, see How to learn French fast.

How does this French passé composé practice drill work?

This French passé composé practice drill has two groups, and you can practise either one or both. A round is 10 questions drawn at random from the group you pick.

• avoir or être? You see a verb, such as aller → ?, and tap the auxiliary it takes. There are 15 verbs in this group.
• Passé composé. You see a subject and a verb, such as nous ___ (finir), and type the auxiliary and the participle. There are 28 forms in this group, across 10 verbs.

You can type the subject or leave it out. The accent keys under the box add letters such as é and î. If only the accents are wrong, the drill says so. At the end of a round, it lists the ones you missed.

Nothing you type leaves your browser.

How is the passé composé formed?

The passé composé is the auxiliary avoir or être in the présent de l’indicatif, followed by the past participle of the verb, according to the OQLF [1]. The two tables below copy one verb of each kind from Usito. Finir takes avoir [7]. Aller takes être, and Usito prints both the masculine and the feminine participle in each row [9].

The OQLF lists several uses [1]. The passé composé can show a finished action whose result still matters now: J’ai apporté ton billet pour le spectacle de ce soir. (I brought your ticket for tonight’s show.) [1] It can state a general truth, often with jamais, souvent or toujours [1]. It can also simply place an event in the past, where it competes with, and often replaces, the passé simple: Nous avons souvent organisé des soupers à ce restaurant. (We often held dinners at this restaurant.) [1]

Do you use avoir or être in the passé composé?

Most verbs take avoir. The OQLF calls it the most frequent auxiliary in the active voice [2]. It is the auxiliary of avoir and être themselves, of all transitive verbs, of most intransitive verbs and of verbs that are only ever impersonal [2]. A verb used impersonally only now and then keeps its usual auxiliary [2]. So the passé composé of être is j’ai été [6], and that of avoir is j’ai eu [5].

Être is used with all pronominal verbs and with certain intransitive verbs that express movement or change [2]. The OQLF names aller, arriver, devenir, entrer, mourir, naître, partir, rester, sortir, tomber and venir [2]. Its pronominal example is Je me suis fait mal. (I hurt myself.) [2]

Some verbs take either auxiliary. The OQLF names commencer, déménager, monter, passer, rajeunir, stationner and vieillir: avoir stresses the action, and être the state that results from it [2]. Its pair: J’ai déménagé en juillet. or Je suis déménagée en juillet. (I moved in July.) [2]

A verb can also change auxiliary with its meaning. Sortir takes être without an object and avoir with one [2]: le soleil est finalement sorti ce matin (the sun finally came out this morning), but J’ai sorti le chien ce matin (I took the dog out this morning) [2]. Usito marks entrer and tomber “être ou avoir” too [17][18].

That is why the avoir-or-être group leaves out entrer, sortir and tomber. Every être verb in it is on the OQLF list and marked être in its Usito entry [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16].

How does the participle agree with être?

With être, the participle agrees in gender and number with the subject, the OQLF says [3]. Its example: Les invités sont arrivés en fin de soirée. (The guests arrived late in the evening.) [3]

Usito’s table for arriver shows the four forms you choose between [10]:

With avoir the rule is different. The participle agrees with the direct object only when that object comes before the verb; with no direct object, or one placed after the verb, it does not change [4]. The OQLF’s example: J’ai beaucoup aimé sa dernière exposition. (I really liked their last exhibition.) [4] The drill has no direct objects, so its avoir forms are the ones Usito and the OQLF print.

How should you use the drill?

Answer from memory first, then look. In a 2006 study, students who took recall tests on prose passages kept substantially more after 2 days and after 1 week than students who restudied the same material, though restudying did better on a test after 5 minutes [19]. That study did not involve French or verb forms [19], so read it as evidence about memory, not a promise about your French.

A few ways to work with the drill:

• Start with avoir or être. The choice comes before the form, so the short group is a warm-up.
• Say the whole form aloud. Read the subject with your answer, as in nous avons fini [7].
• Redo your misses. The end-of-round list shows each prompt and its answer. Start another round and see if they come back.
• Mix the groups. “All” draws from both groups in one round.

The drill covers 10 verbs for the typed forms. For other verbs, look up the Usito entry: each verb entry opened for this page carries a full conjugation table and names the auxiliary [7][9].

Common mistakes

• Using avoir with aller, arriver, partir or venir. They are on the OQLF’s list of intransitive verbs of movement or change, which take être [2].
• Forgetting the agreement with être. The participle agrees with the subject, as in elles sont arrivées [3][10].
• Agreeing the participle with avoir by habit. With avoir, it agrees only with a direct object placed before the verb [4].
• Treating every verb as one-auxiliary. Commencer, déménager, monter, passer and others can take either, and sortir changes with its meaning [2].
• Using être as its own auxiliary. Être takes avoir: j’ai été [2][6].
• Relying on a grammar summary, including this one. Reference pages are updated. Compare each source page’s date with the date at the top of this one.

See also: avoir conjugation and être conjugation.

See also: the passé composé.

Sources