Telling a story in the past: the tenses of narration

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jrineakter
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Telling a story in the past: the tenses of narration

Post by jrineakter »

Telling a story in the past tense is a useful exercise for any French learner . It allows you to narrate personal facts , anecdotes or significant memories . But with the many tenses of French conjugation , it is not always easy to find your way around. Here is a detailed explanation of the past tenses of the story and their different uses. Let's go!

The tenses of the story in the past
To tell a story in the past, we mainly use 2 tenses of French conjugation: the imperfect and the passé composé . Let's first see how to conjugate these narrative tenses before explaining their use and employment in more detail.



To conjugate the verb "to tell" in the imperfect, you must therefore take the root "to tell-" and then add the corresponding endings:


The past tense is formed from two elements: the auxiliary avoir/être in the present + the past participle.

Let's take for example the verb "to sleep". It is conjugated with the auxiliary verb "to have" in the past tense:

How do you know which verb in French is conjugated with the auxiliary verb être or avoir? To find out, I recommend the guide Auxiliaire être and avoir: which one to choose? .


The imperfect indicative is used to set the scene and describe everything that is happening in the background . It is used to explain the setting, the circumstances, the context in which the main action takes place. We will use the imperfect to tell past events such as:


It was her birthday. The girl was wearing a white dress with a party hat on her head. She seemed very focused. There was a huge cake and some sweets on the table. After taking a deep breath, she blew out the candle with all her might.

Here, the imperfect is used to describe the context of the situation:

You may have noticed: we often use adverbs of time to introduce the usual event. I advise you to memorize the main ones, it may be useful to you:


The passé composé expresses brief, precise and punctual actions . It is not a habit, but it happened once at a precise moment in a limited and defined time:


These are not facts that are repeated often. They happened once at a specific time in the past.

Tips for differentiating the imperfect from the passé composé
To help you decide whether to tell a story in the passé composé or imperfect tense, ask yourself these questions: Am I describing? Is this a habit? Is this a piece of context or secondary information? If so, then you should conjugate the verb in the imperfect tense. Other questions: Is this a main event? Is this a one-time action? If so, then you should conjugate it in the passé composé.




It was morning. It was still cool for a spring day. The sun's rays barely warmed my fingers. I was reading my novel in bed, a cup of coffee in my hand. Usually, I meditated before going to work, but that day, I felt like diving into reading a good historical novel.

Here, the imperfect verbs are used to lebanon whatsapp number data make descriptions or explain circumstances ("was", "did", "read"). The verb "meditated" indicates a repeated fact, while the verb in the past tense ("had wanted") shows a one-off fact that is not a habit.

Facts in the past tense
Let's say you want to tell your best friend about your day. To describe the main actions, you'll use the passé composé:

Today I got up at 7 am to prepare breakfast for the children. Then I drove them to school. On the way back, there was a lot of traffic on the road. That's why I arrived late for work.

The verbs are in the past tense, because they are main actions, punctual and precise in time. They are not secondary information or contextual elements, except for the part on traffic, which explains the use of the imperfect ("had")
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