Skip to content
Study Hall
Unit 2 · 5 lessons

Raconter: Sequencing Events in the Past

Tell a story or report the news so a listener can follow exactly what happened when: the passé composé and imparfait as the two layers of a narrative, the plus-que-parfait for the earlier past, the tense shifts of reported speech, the time expressions depuis, pendant, il y a and dans, and the connectors that turn a list of events into a story.

  • 49 practice questions
  • 41 flashcards
  • 3 interactive lessons
Start lesson 1 →Unit 2 test review →

Lessons

  1. 1Passé Composé and Imparfait in a NarrativeBeyond the single-sentence rule: how a whole story is built from an imparfait scene layer and a passé composé action layer, why duration alone never decides the tense, which verbs change meaning between the two tenses, and how to read and write a narrative sentence by sentence.Interactive10 questions
  2. 2The Plus-que-parfait and the Order of EventsThe plus-que-parfait (had done) lets you step one notch further back into the past, so you can mention events out of order without confusing the listener. Formation with avoir and être, agreement, where déjà, ne… pas and object pronouns go, and the many places where English hides the had that French requires.Interactive10 questions
  3. 3Reporting What Someone SaidPassing on someone's words without quoting them: why a reporting verb in the présent keeps the original tenses while one in the past makes them step back (présent → imparfait, passé composé → plus-que-parfait, futur → conditionnel), how pronouns, possessives and time words shift, and how to report questions with si, ce que and ce qui.Interactive10 questions
  4. 4Time Expressions: depuis, pendant, il y a, dansEnglish uses for, ago and in for very different time relations; French splits them into depuis, pendant, pour, il y a, dans and en, each with its own tense. Depuis with the présent for something still going on, its synonyms ça fait… que, il y a… que and voilà… que, the shift to the imparfait inside a past story, and the time conjunctions dès que, pendant que, chaque fois que, depuis que and jusqu'à ce que.10 questions
  5. 5Structuring a Story or ReportPutting it all together: the five stages of a narrative and the tense each one favours, temporal adverbs and connectors (d'abord, puis, alors, autrefois, dernièrement, dorénavant, enfin…) and their false friends, paragraphing, the order of a news report, retelling a story from another point of view, and listening for the sequence of events.9 questions