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Les 25 verbes essentiels — Your Master Keys
🗝️ Les 25 verbes essentiels — Your Master Keys
Imagine you pick up a French newspaper, open a WhatsApp message from a French pen pal, or watch a French YouTube video. These 25 verbs will appear again and again — in almost every sentence. Master them and the language starts to unlock itself. These are not random words; they are the skeleton of French communication.
Les 25 verbes fondamentaux
These 25 high-frequency verbs form the backbone of AQA Foundation French. Learn to recognise and use them in the present tense — they will appear in reading, listening, writing, and speaking tasks.
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- These 6 irregular verbs appear in virtually every AQA Foundation task — if you know them cold, you gain marks in every single skill.
- In reading and listening, recognise the verb FORM first, then work out who is doing the action (je/il/elle/nous).
- For writing: vary your subject pronouns — don't write je…je…je — mix in on, il, elle, nous.
- In speaking (role-play or photo card), using even one of these verbs correctly in a complex sentence (e.g. je veux aller…) picks up AO2 marks.
❌ Common error: Je suis faim. / Je suis froid.
✓ Correct: J'ai faim. / J'ai froid.
Why it costs marks: In French, physical sensations — hunger, thirst, cold, hot, fear — use avoir, not être. Examiners see this error constantly. Writing je suis faim suggests you haven't understood the difference between the two most important verbs in French, which affects your AO3 (grammatical accuracy) mark.