Imparfait vs Passé Composé: How to Choose Every Time

Getting Started

Most learners can conjugate both past tenses. What costs marks in TEF and TCF writing and speaking is choosing between them, because every story you tell needs both: the passé composé for what happened, the imparfait for everything around it.

The choice comes down to one question, asked of every verb: did it happen, or was it going on?

Think of a film. The passé composé is the plot: each verb is an event, and each event moves the story forward. The imparfait is the scenery: the weather, the setting, what people were like, what was already happening when the camera arrived. A quick test: if you can put “and then” in front of the verb, it is an event, so passé composé.

Punjabi and Hindi already make this distinction, more clearly than English. English “I went to school” can be one trip or a habit. Punjabi separates them:

• main school gaya (once, completed) → passé composé: je suis allé à l’école
• main school jaanda hunda si (used to go, a habit) → imparfait: j’allais à l’école
• main TV dekh reha si (was watching, in progress) → imparfait: je regardais la télé

If hunda si or reha si sounds natural in the Punjabi, the French is almost always imparfait.

By the end of this lesson you should be able to:

• decide between the two tenses for any verb in a story;
• handle the cases the simple rules get wrong: finished durations, counted repetitions, quand;
• use the verbs whose meaning changes with the tense (je savais / j’ai su);
• write a short TEF-style story that moves between scene and events.

Before you start: this lesson assumes you can form the passé composé. All the uses of the imparfait on its own are in the French imparfait.

1 A quick reminder: forming the imparfait

Take the nous form of the present, drop -ons, and add -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. The rule works for almost every verb, even irregular ones:

• Spelling: -ger and -cer verbs keep their soft sound before a and o: je mangeais, je commençais, but nous mangions, nous commencions.
• Sound: je parlais, tu parlais, il parlait, ils parlaient all sound “par-leh”. Only nous and vous sound different.

2 The core question: did it happen, or was it going on?

Read this short story and look at what each tense does:

Il était sept heures du matin. Il faisait froid et il neigeait. J’attendais le bus devant chez moi. Soudain, une voiture s’est arrêtée. Mon voisin a baissé la vitre et m’a proposé de m’emmener. J’ai accepté avec plaisir.

Read only the imparfait verbs (était, faisait, neigeait, attendais) and you get a picture: a cold, snowy morning, someone waiting. Nothing happens. Read only the passé composé verbs (s’est arrêtée, a baissé, a proposé, ai accepté) and you get the plot: a car stopped, and then the neighbour lowered the window, and then he offered a lift, and then I accepted.

3 The imparfait: five jobs

1. Habits and repeated actions, with no count. Signals: tous les jours, le lundi (every Monday), souvent, d’habitude, chaque été.

• Quand j’habitais à Ludhiana, j’allais à l’école à vélo. (When I lived in Ludhiana, I used to cycle to school.)
• Le dimanche, nous allions au gurdwara. (On Sundays we used to go to the gurdwara.)

2. Descriptions: people, places, weather, feelings, as they were.

• La maison était petite mais agréable. (The house was small but nice.)
• Il faisait très chaud. (It was very hot.)
• J’étais fatigué et j’avais faim. (I was tired and hungry.)

3. An action in progress: “was doing”.

• Je regardais la télé. (I was watching TV.)
• Les enfants dormaient. (The children were sleeping.)

4. Age, time and date in the past.

• Il était minuit. (It was midnight.)
• J’avais vingt ans. (I was twenty.)

5. Two things going on at the same time, often with pendant que (while):

• Pendant que je cuisinais, mon mari lisait le journal. (While I was cooking, my husband was reading the paper.)

4 The passé composé: five jobs

1. One completed event, at a specific time.

• Hier, j’ai appelé le bureau. (Yesterday I called the office.)
• Elle est arrivée à huit heures. (She arrived at eight.)

2. A series of events, one after another.

• D’abord, j’ai rempli le formulaire, ensuite j’ai payé, puis je suis parti. (First I filled in the form, then I paid, then I left.)

3. A sudden change or reaction. Signals: soudain, tout à coup, à ce moment-là.

• Soudain, j’ai eu peur. (Suddenly I got scared.)
• Tout à coup, il a commencé à pleuvoir. (All of a sudden it started to rain.)

4. Something that lasted a stated time and is over (section 5).

• J’ai habité à Delhi pendant cinq ans. (I lived in Delhi for five years.)

5. A counted number of times. A habit with no count is imparfait; count the times and they become finished events:

5 The rule most learners never hear: a length of time with an end

You will often read that “descriptions and states take the imparfait”. That is true only when the state is a scene with no end in view. Give it a finished length of time and it becomes an event, so passé composé, even for être, avoir and the weather:

Signals of a finished period: pendant + a length of time, de… à…, toute la journée, toute la semaine, jusqu’à, X ans.

One contrast to know: depuis works the other way. It measures something still going on at that moment, so with the past it takes the imparfait: J’habitais à Surrey depuis deux ans quand j’ai trouvé ce travail (I had been living in Surrey for two years when I found this job).

6 Scene and event together: when, while, and the meaning of quand

The classic pattern: something was going on (imparfait) when something happened (passé composé).

Quand can go either way, and the tense changes the story:

• Quand il est arrivé, nous mangions. (When he arrived, we were already eating.)
• Quand il est arrivé, nous avons mangé. (When he arrived, we ate: he came, then we ate.)

Both are correct. The first sets a scene around his arrival; the second is two events in a row.

Quand + imparfait means “during the time when”: Quand j’étais petit, je jouais au cricket (When I was little, I used to play cricket).

Pendant que (while) introduces something going on, so it takes the imparfait: Pendant que je faisais la queue, j’ai reçu un appel (While I was waiting in line, I got a call).

7 Same verb, different meaning

A handful of verbs describe a state in the imparfait and the moment it began (or a single decisive act) in the passé composé. English often needs a different verb:

Il y avait and il y a eu are the pair you will need most: il y avait describes what was there, il y a eu reports something that happened.

8 Signal words: clues, not rules

Notice le lundi (every Monday) against lundi (this one Monday): the article alone changes the tense.

Signal words help, but the verb’s job decides. Hier usually brings events (hier, j’ai travaillé), yet it can open a scene too: Hier, il faisait froid et je n’avais pas de manteau.

9 Hearing and writing the difference

In speech, listen for the j’ai (“zhay”) of the passé composé, and for the -ais ending, which is longer in the imparfait: finissais has one more syllable than fini. More in hearing the tense.

In writing, a TEF or TCF story usually opens in the imparfait to set the scene, switches to the passé composé when things start to happen, and returns to the imparfait to describe how people felt or what the result looked like.

Common Mistakes

Practice

A. Imparfait or passé composé? Conjugate the verb

B. Scene and event: conjugate both verbs

C. Which meaning? Choose the tense that matches the English

The imparfait vs passé composé drill gives you more sentences like these, each with the reason behind the answer.

Your Turn: Tell a Memory

“Racontez un souvenir” (tell us about a memory) is a common TEF and TCF prompt. Try this one out loud: your first day in Canada, or any first day you remember. Set the scene first (where, when, weather, how you felt), then tell what happened.

Model answer: C’était le 15 janvier 2022. Il faisait moins vingt-cinq et il neigeait. Je ne connaissais personne à Winnipeg et j’avais un peu peur. À l’aéroport, j’ai pris un taxi et je suis allé chez mon cousin. Pendant que nous mangions, il m’expliquait comment prendre le bus. Le lendemain, j’ai ouvert un compte en banque et j’ai acheté un manteau. Ce jour-là, j’ai compris que l’hiver canadien était une vraie aventure !

Look at the pattern: the scene is in the imparfait (était, faisait, neigeait, connaissais, avais, mangions, expliquait), and the events are in the passé composé (ai pris, suis allé, ai ouvert, ai acheté, ai compris). A woman telling the story writes je suis allée.

What’s Next

• The French imparfaitevery use of the imparfait on its own, including politeness and suggestions.
• Passé composéavoir or être, participles and agreement.
• Plus-que-parfaitthe past before the past, the third tense of every French story.
• Imparfait vs passé composé drillchoose the tense in real sentences, with the reason for each answer.
• La première tempêtea B1 story that uses both tenses.
• Passé simple (B2)the literary past you will meet in books and news stories.