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L'imparfait — Painting the Past, Not Just Listing Events
🌅 L'imparfait — Painting the Past, Not Just Listing Events
The perfect tense tells you what happened. The imperfect tells you what it was like. To describe the atmosphere of a past holiday, explain what the weather used to be, or say how you felt at that moment — French uses the imperfect. At GCSE, two phrases unlock most of this tense instantly: c'était (it was) and il y avait (there was / there were). Get comfortable with these and your descriptive writing transforms.
L'imparfait — description et habitude
The imperfect is used for: (1) descriptions of past states or situations; (2) habitual / repeated past actions ("used to"); (3) background context behind a perfect-tense event.
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- In speaking (photo card / general conversation), use C'était + adjective parce que… to evaluate any past experience — it is a high-value, low-risk structure.
- For the 90-word writing task: one or two imperfect verbs (even just c'était) alongside your perfect-tense sentences signal grammatical range (AO3).
- The imperfect stem for faire is fais-: je faisais du sport (I used to do sport).
- Il y avait never changes — it has no plural form: il y avait un chien / il y avait des chiens.
❌ Common error: J'ai été heureux pendant les vacances. (using the perfect tense for a state/feeling)
✓ Correct: J'étais heureux pendant les vacances.
Why it costs marks: States, feelings, and descriptions in the past use the imperfect, not the perfect. Être as a state verb almost always takes the imperfect: j'étais, c'était, il était. Using the perfect for states (j'ai été heureux) is grammatically possible in very specific contexts but sounds unnatural and signals that the student has not grasped the imperfect / perfect distinction — a key AO3 marker at GCSE.