You can form both tenses. J’ai parlé and je parlais both come out cleanly, and the conjugation tables stopped being a problem a long time ago. Then you start telling a story about last weekend, reach the third verb, and pause, because nothing in those tables tells you which past this sentence needs.

This guide covers the core contrast, the trigger words and their limits, the state verbs that follow their own logic (including devoir), and the auxiliaries and agreement that keep your passé composé accurate.

One question decides nearly every sentence

French splits the past by aspect, not by time. The passé composé reports an event: complete, bounded, over. It answers the question, what happened? The imparfait describes everything around that event, the setting, the weather, a habit, an ongoing state, and answers the other one: what was going on?

Think of it like a movie. The imparfait is the camera panning across the set: the rain on the windows, the people at their desks. The passé composé is the cut where something happens. Il pleuvait quand je suis sorti. The rain is the backdrop; stepping out is the event.

Trigger words, and how far to trust them

Certain time expressions lean so consistently toward one tense that they work as triggers; most simply restate the answer to the core question.

The markers are clues rather than rules, though, and duration is where they run out. A stretch of time presented as a closed, counted chapter takes the passé composé even when it lasted years: J’habitais trois ans à Paris is an error. Duration described as the backdrop of a period can sit in the imparfait, and both perspectives can be right.

States follow the question, not the trigger

Verbs that describe states, être, avoir, savoir, vouloir, sit in the imparfait when the state simply held, because a state is the definition of what was going on. Put one in the passé composé and you are saying something changed.

Weather follows the same rule. When the weather is the backdrop to something else, it takes the imparfait: Il faisait beau hier, alors on est sortis. Il a fait beau hier is not wrong, but it reports the day as one closed block rather than setting a scene, so inside a story it is the wrong choice.

The same logic explains why a few verbs seem to shift meaning between the tenses. Devoir is the clearest case.

Savoir and vouloir follow the same line: ongoing states of knowing and wanting in the imparfait, the moment that state changed in the passé composé.

Building the passé composé: avoir, être, and agreement

Choosing the passé composé is half the job; building it correctly is the other half, and this is where written French gives learners away, on an exam or in an email to a French colleague.

Most verbs take avoir plus a past participle: -er verbs end in -é (parler → parlé), 2nd-group -ir verbs in -i (finir → fini), -re verbs in -u (vendre → vendu). The common irregulars simply have to be known: pris, fait, vu, été, eu.

Verbs of movement and change of state take être instead: aller, venir, revenir, devenir, arriver, partir, entrer, rentrer, sortir, monter, descendre, naître, mourir, rester, tomber, retourner, passer (DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP in American classrooms, a mnemonic that leaves out passer). All reflexive verbs take être as well: Je me suis levé, never Je m’ai levé.

Seven of them, monter, descendre, entrer, sortir, rentrer, retourner, passer, cross back to avoir when they take a direct object: Elle est montée, but Elle a monté les valises; Je suis sorti, but J’ai sorti mon chien.

Agreement has one rule per auxiliary. With être, the participle agrees with the subject: les filles sont parties, and a mixed-gender subject takes the masculine plural, Marie et Pierre sont allés. With avoir, the participle never agrees with the subject, only with a direct object that comes before the verb: J’ai écrit les lettres, but les lettres que j’ai écrites. The pronoun en never triggers agreement: Des pommes, j’en ai mangé.

Building the imparfait: one stem rule

One rule and one exception build the imparfait. Take the nous form of the present, drop -ons, and add -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. The exception is être, whose stem is ét-: j’étais, tu étais, il était.

Two spelling details keep the pronunciation right: -ger verbs keep the e (je mangeais), and -cer verbs take ç (je commençais). And verbs like partir never take the -iss- that finir does: je partais, not je partissais.

How French speakers reminisce

So far we’ve focused on the grammar rules, but sounding French when you reminisce takes an additional layer of nuance. Native speakers open past-habit narratives with a reminiscence marker: À l’époque, Quand j’étais petit, Dans le temps. The timing stays impressionistic, On mangeait vers midi rather than Je mangeais à 12h15. And speakers judge the scene while describing it: c’était génial, c’était l’enfer. A habit narrative without a point of view on it sounds unfinished to a French ear.

All of that together, from a native speaker: Quand j’étais au lycée, on séchait tout le temps les cours pour aller au café du coin, c’était vraiment n’importe quoi mais qu’est-ce qu’on rigolait ! Every verb paints the scene, the memory gets a verdict, and no timestamp appears anywhere. If the imparfait is the scene-painting tense, French expects painted scenes to have a mood.

The choice, in one place

• Reporting what happened → passé composé. Describing what was going on → imparfait.

• Interruptions: the ongoing action stays in the imparfait; the event that cuts in takes the passé composé.

• Habits (tous les jours, d’habitude) → imparfait. Single dated events (hier, soudain, à 8h) → passé composé.

• States and weather → imparfait; the passé composé signals that a state changed.

• A closed, counted duration → passé composé; duration as backdrop can stay in the imparfait.

Where the choice becomes automatic

You can follow every distinction in this guide and still hesitate mid-story, because recognizing the contrast on a page and producing it at speaking speed are different skills. The question, what happened versus what was going on, has to be answered in the second it takes to reach the verb.

That speed comes from telling stories yourself, in writing and out loud, and being corrected while the tense choice is still warm. Dioma runs that loop for intermediate and advanced French learners. You narrate; the system flags the tense and shows you which question your sentence was answering, and the cases that trip you repeatedly, the state verbs, the interruption pattern, the agreement endings, come back in later sessions until they stop tripping you. If you are preparing for the TEF, the writing and speaking sections focus on exactly this.

This week, write eight sentences about your last trip: four that report what happened, four that describe what was around it. Then read them aloud. You already half-know the rules. The goal is to stop having to think about them while the story is moving.

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