Coucou ,

You have covered a lot of rough terrain in all the Fun French Grammar courses you've done so far! You've weathered the storm so far! ⚡ Bravo! 👏🏾 👏🏾 👏🏾

You're well on your way to expressing yourself with a bit of panache in French. You may not be perfect but there'll be ⚡  flashes ⚡ of brilliance that will have you all puffed up with pride. 

After this course you're going to cover the missing puzzle piece of the past. 

The imperfect sometimes called the storytelling past tense - is the continuous past. It sets the background scene to a story, like the set of a theatre sets the scene before any of the main action happens.

You already met Mr Perfect - who is annoyingly efficient and constantly ticking off the things he's done on his 'to do' list. The present perfect (past) tense is used for actions that are over and done with - fini - perfected! Mr Perfect cannot be that efficient alone though - non, non et non! He needs his helper auxiliary verbs (avoir or être) then the past participle.

Well, think of Mademoiselle Zen is also a past tense - she represents the imperfect. She's a lot more chilled out than Monsieur Parfait. The action isn't fini - perfected - it's continuous. 'Who cares when the action started and who cares when the action finished. It doesn't matter!' she says. To form the imperfect take the nous stem of the verb in the present tense. Remove the -ons ending and add on the special imperfect endings ais, ais, ait, ions, iez, aient.

Comme d'habitude there are several translations into English - well 3. 

1. The spinning top translation - was ___ing/were ___ing (like the whirring sound of a spinning top). 

• I was sleeping - Je dormais 😴
• You were sleeping - Tu dormais/Vous dormiez

2. Used to - 

I used to sleep at my grandma's every weekend - Je dormais chez ma grand-mère tous les week-ends. 👵

3. Regular/Habitual past actions (can often be replaced with 'used to')

I slept at my grandma's every weekend - Je dormais chez ma grand-mère tous les week-ends. 

💫  Et voilà - that's the imperfect! 

Then you'll step into the Tardis and go past the past! Into the pluperfect (sometimes called the past perfect). 

You've done the present perfect - Present tense of avoir/être + past participle

With the pluperfect you use the - Imperfect tense of avoir/être + past participle.

In English it translates to 'had done' something. 

I had slept at my grandma's every weekend for years. J'avais dormi chez ma grand-mère tous les week-ends pendant des années.

Did you already know all that? If not then this course will give you plenty of practice - but you know that by now. 

Knowing the imperfect and pluperfect patterns allows you to spin a good yarn in French. You'll be knitting your French together nicely - thank you very much. The locals will be hanging on your every word. I recommend holding onto the local with a firm grip whilst you're forming French sentences. It can be low and laborious in the beginning.

A bit like learning to knit. You'll start off with some weird looking knitting. Plenty of holes where you've dropped a stitch or ten! Keep going with your patchwork French - the locals will fill the gaps for you. If they won't - they ain't no friend of yours! Let them go and find someone else to bore a hole into. Just kidding! The only way to get better at speaking in French is to speak in French. I know - such wisdom! 🦉

‘The lessons are lively and well-constructed. All the basics are covered to enable you to construct your own sentences. The content is detailed, without being cumbersome. The lessons are conducted in an informal manner, making it fun to learn. Cecile provides excellent videos to practice with. I would recommend her lessons to anyone with an interest in learning conversational French. Questionable taste in glasses though!’ Steve

What you get:

• Over 6 hours of video in total (you can revisit them as often as you need to) 📹
• Written summaries (you don't even have to lift a pen if you don't want to) 📄
• Practice questions with the answers (to see what you've remembered and where the gaps are) ✍🏾
• French songs (with lyrics and translations - powerful way to learn) 🎶
• Games (to make learning fun - it's not just kids who benefit from playing!) 🎲

To converse well in French - you'll be needing the imperfect and the pluperfect beaucoup! 

This course will help you get it off to a flying start. ✈️ You'll learn platefuls 🍽️  of useful French that you can sample straight away. The next time you read in French or have the French subtitles on a French film 🎥  you'll suddenly notice the imperfect and pluperfect everywhere - and that's even more exciting than spotting 10 differences between 2 images - oh oui, oui, oui! 👍🏿 👍🏿 👍🏿

CécileBB :-)