French exercises / A2 / Verbs & tensesAuxiliary, past participle and agreement: practice with full verb conjugation.
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Avoir or être in the passé composé
Almost every French verb forms the passé composé with avoir. Être is used by a short, closed list of movement and change-of-state verbs: aller, venir, partir, sortir and about a dozen others, and by every reflexive verb. If your verb is not on that list and is not reflexive, use avoir.
Read the full explanationThe passé composé
The passé composé is the everyday past tense of spoken French. It is built from an auxiliary: avoir for most verbs, être for a short list and all reflexives, plus a past participle. It reports finished events, and it is the tense you need to say what you did yesterday.
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