Passé composé or imparfait: explained for Italians

If you are in Year 2 of a language high school (liceo linguistico), with French as your second or third language, the start of the year is spent reviewing the passé composé (which you met in Year 1) and introducing the imparfait. The contrast between the two is the heart of the programme, together with the futur, the conditionnel, the plus-que-parfait and, later on, the relative pronouns. The test that examines exactly the choice between passé composé and imparfait usually falls between mid-November and early December: you have seven to ten weeks, just the right time not to end up learning it the night before.

The starting point: the match with Italian works (almost always)

The good news is that the passé composé is roughly the Italian passato prossimo and the imparfait is roughly the Italian imperfetto, and in Italian you already have the right instinct: ho mangiato (“I ate”, “I have eaten”) is a single, completed event, mangiavo (“I was eating”, “I used to eat”) is in the background. The problem is that “almost always” is not “always”, and the mistakes arise exactly at the points where the match breaks down. First we see how the two tenses are formed, then the rule for choosing, then where Italian lets you down.

How the imparfait is formed

You start from the stem of the first person plural of the present and add the endings -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient:

The only real exception is être, which has an irregular stem (ét-): j’étais, tu étais, il était, nous étions, vous étiez, ils étaient. All the other verbs, even those that are very irregular in the present (avoir → nous avons → j’avais; faire → nous faisons → je faisais), still follow the first person plural rule.

How the passé composé is formed

The auxiliary in the present (avoir or être) + the past participle. The difficulty here is not the ending, it is choosing the right auxiliary.

With être go a closed group of verbs of movement and change of state. The list is often remembered with the acronym DR MRS VANDERTRAMP (Devenir, Revenir, Monter, Rester, Sortir, Venir, Aller, Naître, Descendre, Entrer, Rentrer, Tomber, Retourner, Arriver, Mourir, Partir), plus all pronominal verbs (se laver, se lever, se souvenir…).

• Elle est allée au marché. (She went to the market.)
• Ils sont partis tôt. (They left early.)
• Je me suis levé à sept heures. (I got up at seven o’clock.)

With avoir go all the others:

• J’ai mangé une pomme. (I ate an apple.)
• Nous avons regardé un film. (We watched a film.)

Past participle agreement (the basics)

With être (non-pronominal), the participle always agrees with the subject, in gender and number:

• Elle est allée (not allé), ils sont partis, elles sont parties.

With avoir, the participle as a rule stays invariable, unless the direct object (COD, complément d’objet direct) is placed before the verb. In that case it agrees with the direct object:

• J’ai mangé des pommes. (I ate some apples. Object after: no agreement)
• Les pommes que j’ai mangées. (The apples that I ate. The object que, referring to les pommes, comes before the verb: feminine plural agreement)
• Je les ai mangées. (I ate them. les comes before the verb, referring to the apples: agreement)

With pronominal verbs the rule gets more complicated (it depends on whether the reflexive pronoun is a direct or an indirect object), but for the Year 2 test it is usually enough to master the first two cases well: non-pronominal être always agrees, avoir agrees only with a direct object placed before the verb.

The rule for choosing: passé composé or imparfait

Here the logic is the same as in the Italian passato prossimo/imperfetto, applied more systematically:

• Passé composé for a single, completed action that moves the story forward: Hier, je suis allé au cinéma. (Yesterday I went to the cinema.)
• Imparfait for the background: descriptions, states of mind, habits, actions in progress interrupted by another action:

Here lisais (imparfait) describes the action in progress (I was reading) and a sonné (passé composé) is the single event that interrupts that scene. It is the most useful example because it shows the two tenses in the same sentence, each with its own role.

Lexical cues help you recognise which tense is needed:

• towards the passé composé: soudain (suddenly), tout à coup (all of a sudden), une fois (once), un jour (one day), tout de suite (at once)
• towards the imparfait: d’habitude (usually), souvent (often), tous les jours (every day), chaque matin (every morning), pendant que (while; when it introduces a background action)

Where the match with Italian breaks down

This is the real critical point for the passé composé versus the imparfait: word-for-word translation from Italian works in most cases, but not in these three:

1. A bounded duration, even a long one. In Italian you would say ho vissuto tre anni a Parigi (“I lived in Paris for three years”) with the passato prossimo, and in French it stays passé composé even if it seems to “last”: J’ai vécu trois ans à Paris. Duration is not enough to trigger the imparfait: what counts is that the action has a defined beginning and end, however long.
2. Verbs of state (savoir, connaître, vouloir, pouvoir) in the passé composé change nuance compared with the imparfait, something that in Italian is not always felt so sharply: je savais (sapevo, “I knew”, a state) against j’ai su (ho saputo, “I found out”, a single event). The same with vouloir: je voulais (“I wanted”, a general wish) against j’ai voulu (“I wanted to”, “I tried” or “I decided” at that moment).
3. Depuis and pendant are not translated in the same way. Depuis with an action still going on at the time of the story takes the imparfait (j’habitais à Rome depuis deux ans quand…, “I had been living in Rome for two years when…”), while pendant with a completed action takes the passé composé (j’ai habité à Rome pendant deux ans, “I lived in Rome for two years”). The typical mistake is to use pendant thinking “for two years” and then put the imparfait because “it looks like a duration”.

Three worked exercises

Exercise 1: put the passage in the past, choosing passé composé or imparfait, and justify each choice:

Il (faire) beau. Marie (se promener) dans le parc quand elle (voir) son ami Paul. Ils (parler) pendant une heure, puis ils (décider) d’aller boire un café.

(The weather was fine. Marie was walking in the park when she saw her friend Paul. They talked for an hour, then they decided to go for a coffee.)

Solution:

• Il faisait beau. → imparfait, description of the background (the weather there was).
• Marie se promenait → imparfait, action in progress.
• elle a vu → passé composé, single event that interrupts the scene.
• Ils ont parlé pendant une heure → passé composé: “pendant” signals a bounded, completed duration, not a background.
• ils ont décidé → passé composé, single action that moves the story forward.

Exercise 2: complete with the right participle agreement:

a) Elle est (allé___) à l’école. b) Les fleurs que j’ai (acheté___) sont belles. c) Nous avons (mangé___) des croissants. d) Ils se sont (levé___) tôt.

Solutions: a) allée: non-pronominal être, agreement with the feminine singular subject. b) achetées: avoir, but the direct object (que, referring to les fleurs, feminine plural) comes first, so there is agreement. c) mangé: avoir, the direct object (des croissants) comes after, so no agreement. d) levés: pronominal, agreement with the subject (ils, masculine plural) because the pronoun se acts as the direct object here.

Exercise 3: translate from Italian:

a) “Quando ero piccola, andavo in Francia ogni estate.” (“When I was little, I went to France every summer.”) → Quand j’étais petite, j’allais en France chaque été. (imparfait in both: a state + a habit, lexical cue “every summer”)

b) “Ieri ho incontrato Sophie al mercato.” (“Yesterday I met Sophie at the market.”) → Hier, j’ai rencontré Sophie au marché. (passé composé, single action)

c) “Ho vissuto due anni in Spagna.” (“I lived in Spain for two years.”) → J’ai vécu deux ans en Espagne. (passé composé despite the duration: it is bounded and completed)

d) “Mentre studiavo, mia sorella guardava la televisione.” (“While I was studying, my sister was watching television.”) → Pendant que j’étudiais, ma sœur regardait la télévision. (imparfait in both: two parallel background actions, no single interruption)

One more case: the same sentence, two tenses, two different meanings

An effective way to fix the rule is to see the same sentence with both tenses and notice how the meaning changes, not just the form:

• Il pleuvait quand je suis sorti. It was raining (background, imparfait) when I went out (single event, passé composé): it describes the scene at the moment I leave.
• Il a plu toute la journée. It rained all day: passé composé because “toute la journée” is a bounded, completed duration, exactly like pendant trois ans in the earlier example.
• Quand j’étais enfant, je jouais au foot. When I was a child I played football: imparfait in both, it is a habit repeated over time, with no precise beginning or end in the sentence.
• Un jour, j’ai joué avec l’équipe nationale junior. One day I played with the junior national team: passé composé, because “un jour” introduces a specific, unique event, not a habit.

The practical criterion always remains the same: ask yourself whether the sentence is telling what happened (passé composé) or how things were / what used to happen (imparfait) at the moment you are talking about.

Why you should automate the auxiliary before the agreement

A mistake I often see in Year 2 is to concentrate only on the participle agreement and get the auxiliary wrong beforehand. Before thinking about agreement, always check:

1. Is the verb on the list of verbs of movement/change of state (DR MRS VANDERTRAMP)? → être.
2. Is the verb pronominal (preceded by se/s’ in the infinitive)? → être.
3. In all other cases → avoir.

Only after you have chosen the right auxiliary does it make sense to ask whether the participle must agree: with avoir the question is “is there a direct object before the verb?”, with être (non-pronominal) the agreement with the subject is automatic and needs no further check.

Frequently asked questions

When does the plus-que-parfait come into play compared with these two? The plus-que-parfait (j’avais mangé) is used for an action that comes even earlier than another one already in the past: Quand je suis arrivé, elle était déjà partie means I arrived after she had already left. You will see it later in the Year 2 programme, but the logic rests exactly on the distinction between passé composé and imparfait that you are consolidating now.

Does the same problem exist in English? The mechanism is different, but the trap is the same: instinctively translating the Italian passato prossimo. In English it leads you to use the present perfect where the past simple is needed; I talk about it in past simple or present perfect: the typical mistakes of Italian speakers.

Is there a practice tool for French or for the languages of the first two years? No, there is not yet a practice test dedicated to French: the school practice tests that exist, for now maths and physics, are on the school practice tests page.

If you also study Spanish, the natural comparison is with the pretérito indefinido and imperfecto.

If French continues in Year 4, the choice between certificates moves onto different ground; I talk about it in B2 First or DELF B2: which to take in Year 4. You will find the general picture of languages and French at English and languages, and if you want to review passé composé and imparfait together before the test you can start with a free introductory call.