LearnModule 5 · Lesson 15 of 30Basic User · CEFR A2 mastery + the B1 bridgeUnit 3 · The two pasts, mastered

Three tenses, one life

Module 5 of the free French course (CEFR A2 mastery + the B1 bridge), lesson 15 of 30: The switching page: the same sentence travels through time. On this page: 7 words with their genders and respellings, the rule, a watch-out line and the audio — the study notes behind the workbook's lesson 15.

The words

French	English	Say it
hier	yesterday	yehr
aujourd'hui	today	oh-zhoor-DWEE
demain	tomorrow	duh-MA(n)
j'ai joué	I played	zhay zhoo-AY
je joue	I play	zhuh ZHOO
je vais jouer	I am going to play	zhuh veh zhoo-AY
le temps	the time / the weather (or a tense)	luh TAH(n)

Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.

Hear the words

Each word is read twice — say it back in the gap. Computer-generated voice; credits on the course page.

La règle · The rule

The switching page: the same sentence travels through time. Hier, j'ai joué au parc. Aujourd'hui, je joue au parc. Demain, je vais jouer au parc.

Et aussi · And also

Run your own verbs through the machine — eat, read, watch, get up — until the switching costs nothing. That switching IS the Basic band, mastered.

Attention · Watch out

le temps here is the grammatical tense (le passé, le présent, le futur) as well as time and weather. The French word covers all three; the context decides.

Do it now — on paper

Say all 7 words aloud twice from the respelling, then once from the French spelling alone — begin with hier.
Copy every word with its accents on paper; then cover the English column and write each meaning back from the French.
Write two sentences of your own that get the watch-out line right, then the two practice pages of workbook lesson 15 in Module 5 are the written half of this page.

This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The French Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.

Keep these words

Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.

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