Passé composé examples

“Please don’t use the passé simple tense in your essay.”

This is the first sentence our professor told us, a group of French college students, as we were about to take an exam.

“Most French college students don’t know how to use the passé simple properly”, he went on.

My professor was right.

Most French people don’t know how to use the passé simple properly because they rarely need to use it.

This is great news for you as a French learner, because it means you probably don’t need to bother learning this complicated tense.

if your only goal is to communicate with locals, you only need to know two French past tenses: le passé composé and l’imparfait. That’s why these are the tenses we focus on in our conversational French app.

Today’s article will show you when and how to use the passé composé and how the DR MRS P.

VANDERTRAMP acronym can help you.

When should you use the passé composé?

The bad news is that French people use several past tenses.

The good news is that le passé composé is the most common tense and that you can already express yourself well if it’s the on