You should now be fairly clear about using the perfect tense. There is another past tense you need to know in order to talk confidently about events in the past. It is called the imperfect. The English equivalent is "was doing " or "used to do".Here is a summary of the uses of the imperfect:
1. Providing a background to the events you are describing
| (a) They lived in the country | Ils habitaient à la campagne | |
| (b) It was wartime | C 'était le temps de guerre | |
| (c) Her parents were well off | Ses parents étaient aisés |
2. Talking about something you used to do
| (a ) I used to play the piano | Je jouais du piano | |
| (b) My father used to work in Preston | Mon père travaillait à Preston |
3 Describing people or events in the past
| (a) The headmaster was called Mr Cooper | Le directeur s'appelait Monsieur Cooper | |
| (b) Our village had two churches | Notre village avait deux églises | |
| (c) The mountains were very high | Les montagnes étaient très hautes |
Formation of the imperfect
Start with the " nous" form of the present tense of the verb e.g. nous parlons
If you remove the "ons" ending, you are left with the stem "parl", to which you add these endings
-ais -ais -ait - ions - iez -aient
Thus the imperfect form of parler is:
| Je parlais | Nous parlions |
| Tu parlais | Vous parliez |
| Il parlait | Ils parlaient |
| Elle parlait | Elles parlaient |
You can now form the imperfect of any verb ( except être ) so long as you know the "nous" form of the present tense
| Avoir | Nous avons | J'avais |
| Vouloir | Nous voulons | Je voulais |
| Pouvoir | Nous pouvons | Je pouvais |
| Devoir | Nous devons | Je devais |
| Savoir | Nous savons | Je savais |
| Prendre | Nous prenons | Je prenais |
| Aller | Nous allons | J'allais |
| Venir | Nous venons | Je venais |
| Lire | Nous lisons | Je lisais |
| Voir | Nous voyons | Je voyais |
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