Reference

French tenses

French tenses are not hard to build. Choosing between two that could both fit the sentence is the hard part, and it is the part textbooks tend to cover last. These pages do the forms quickly and spend their length on the choice.

Reference5

A2Elementary

The futur simpleThe futur simple adds -ai, -as, -a, -ons, -ez, -ont to the infinitive: je parlerai, tu finiras.
The imparfaitThe imparfait describes rather than reports: the weather, someone’s mood, what was already going on, what used to happen.
The passé composéThe passé composé is the everyday past tense of spoken French.

B1Intermediate

The conditionnelThe conditionnel is the futur simple stem with imparfait endings, so it costs almost nothing once you know those two.
The plus-que-parfaitThe plus-que-parfait is the imparfait of avoir or être plus a past participle: j’avais fini, elle était partie.