If you’re a beginner to low-intermediate level learner, you can get along for a good while speaking basic French using the present tense, le passé composé, and the futur proche (aller + infinitive).
I think it’s a really good idea to focus on mastering those three tenses and to get to where you feel comfortable using them before venturing out into the great big world of French verb forms. This will give you the opportunity you need to learn other important grammatical aspects of the language and to actually use them!
The present, basic past, and near future tenses will serve the purpose of getting your point across, and your main objective of communicating in French will be achieved.
Once you’ve reached this point, you will naturally want to communicate on a higher level so that you can say what you really mean. Expressing the time frame in which an action is taking (or took) place becomes more and more important as your level increases.
In French, there are many different tenses and verb forms. Learning to conjugate verbs can be challenging, but it’s very manageable. You just learn the rules and practice until you remember everything.
Knowing when to use all of the different tenses is the tricky part, and I’m here to help! Let’s work on this together. We’ll begin by doing a 17 minute exercise. Watch the video below, and when you’re ready, you can take my free “What’s That French Tense” quiz.
Here are the 11 French tenses and verb forms included in the video and quiz:
le présent
l’imparfait
le futur simple
le passé composé
le conditionnel
le plus-que-parfait
le conditionnel passé
le futur antérieur
le subjonctif
le subjonctif passé
l’impératif
le passé récent
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but exercises and review activities like “What’s that French tense?” will certainly help you move toward being able to switch between tenses with confidence.
