French Verb Practice: Exercises and Practice Tips

Key takeaways

• Consistent short sessions beat occasional long ones: 15 minutes of daily verb practice outperforms a two-hour weekend session.
• The passé composé and imparfait are the two tenses that cause the most confusion for intermediate learners, and they require dedicated contrast practice.
• Fill-in-the-blank exercises build accuracy; shadowing builds speed; both are needed together.
• Irregular verbs like être (to be), avoir (to have), aller (to go), and faire (to do/make) appear in almost every sentence and deserve extra repetition.
• Translation drills expose gaps in your knowledge faster than multiple-choice exercises.

Why verb practice works differently from vocabulary practice

With vocabulary, seeing a word a few times and using it in a sentence is often enough to retain it. With verb conjugations, recognition is not the same as production. You might read nous allons (we go) and understand it instantly but then say nous allons wrong under pressure because the -ons ending for nous has not been drilled enough.

Effective verb practice requires three things working together:

• Accuracy work: exercises where you must produce the correct form with no hints.
• Speed work: activities where you have to retrieve forms quickly, like speaking or shadowing.
• Contextual work: using verbs in real sentences and conversations, not just in isolation.

The exercises below focus on accuracy first. Build from there.

Fill-in-the-blank: present tense exercises

Complete each sentence with the correct present tense form of the verb in parentheses. Answers follow each set.

Set 1: Regular verbs (-er, -ir, -re)

1. Elle ______ (parler) très vite. (She speaks very fast.)
2. Nous ______ (finir) le travail ce soir. (We finish the work tonight.)
3. Tu ______ (attendre) depuis combien de temps? (How long have you been waiting?)
4. Vous ______ (choisir) quel plat? (Which dish are you choosing?)
5. Ils ______ (vendre) des légumes au marché. (They sell vegetables at the market.)
6. Je ______ (travailler) de neuf heures à dix-sept heures. (I work from nine to five.)

Answers, Set 1: parle / finissons / attends / choisissez / vendent / travaille

Set 2: Irregular verbs

1. Je ______ (aller) au cinéma demain. (I am going to the cinema tomorrow.)
2. Ils ______ (avoir) deux enfants. (They have two children.)
3. Tu ______ (être) en retard. (You are late.)
4. Nous ______ (faire) la cuisine ensemble. (We cook together.)
5. Elle ______ (vouloir) un café, s’il vous plaît. (She would like a coffee, please.)
6. Vous ______ (pouvoir) m’aider? (Can you help me?)
7. Il ______ (venir) avec nous ce week-end. (He is coming with us this weekend.)

Answers, Set 2: vais / ont / es / faisons / veut / pouvez / vient

Note on irregular verbs: être (to be), avoir (to have), aller (to go), faire (to do/make), vouloir (to want), pouvoir (to be able to), and venir (to come) are the seven irregular verbs that appear most often in everyday French. Prioritize these before moving to less common patterns.

Fill-in-the-blank: passé composé exercises

The passé composé (past tense for completed actions) is formed with avoir (to have) or être (to be) plus the past participle. For a full breakdown of how the passé composé works, the passé composé guide covers formation rules and agreement in detail.

Set 3: Passé composé with avoir

1. Hier soir, nous ______ (manger) une pizza. (Last night, we ate a pizza.)
2. Il ______ (finir) ses devoirs à minuit. (He finished his homework at midnight.)
3. Tu ______ (voir) ce film? (Have you seen this film?)
4. Elle ______ (prendre) le bus ce matin. (She took the bus this morning.)
5. Vous ______ (boire) du vin au dîner? (Did you drink wine at dinner?)
6. J’______ (oublier) mon téléphone à la maison. (I forgot my phone at home.)

Answers, Set 3: avons mangé / a fini / as vu / a pris / avez bu / ai oublié

Set 4: Passé composé with être

Verbs of movement and all reflexive verbs take être as the auxiliary. The past participle agrees in gender and number with the subject.

1. Elle ______ (partir) à sept heures. (She left at seven o’clock.)
2. Nous ______ (arriver) en avance. (We arrived early.)
3. Il ______ (rester) à la maison. (He stayed at home.)
4. Les enfants ______ (rentrer) après l’école. (The children came home after school.)
5. Elle ______ (se lever) tôt ce matin. (She got up early this morning.)

Answers, Set 4: est partie / sommes arrivés / est resté / sont rentrés / s’est levée

Fill-in-the-blank: imparfait vs passé composé

This is the area where intermediate learners make the most errors. The passé composé describes a completed action with a clear endpoint; the imparfait describes an ongoing state, a background condition, or a habitual past action. For a detailed comparison of when to use each tense, the passé composé vs imparfait guide gives side-by-side examples.

Set 5: Choose the correct tense

Choose either the passé composé (PC) or imparfait (IMP) for each blank.

1. Quand j’_______ petit, j’_______ souvent à la plage. (When I was little, I often went to the beach.) [être / aller]
2. Elle _______ ses devoirs quand le téléphone _______. (She was doing her homework when the phone rang.) [faire / sonner]
3. Nous _______ au restaurant tous les vendredis quand nous _______ à Paris. (We used to go to the restaurant every Friday when we lived in Paris.) [aller / habiter]
4. Il _______ fatigué, alors il _______ tôt. (He was tired, so he went to bed early.) [être / se coucher]
5. Les enfants _______ dans le jardin quand il _______ à pleuvoir. (The children were playing in the garden when it started to rain.) [jouer / commencer]

Answers, Set 5:

1. étais (IMP) / allais (IMP)
2. faisait (IMP) / a sonné (PC)
3. allions (IMP) / habitions (IMP)
4. était (IMP) / s’est couché (PC)
5. jouaient (IMP) / a commencé (PC)

The pattern: If the verb describes the background or a state that was already ongoing, use the imparfait. If it describes a new event that interrupted or happened within that background, use the passé composé.

Translation drills

Translation drills force you to retrieve verb forms from meaning rather than from a matching exercise. This is closer to what speaking and writing actually demand.

Translate the following sentences into French. Cover the answers before you try.

1. We were eating dinner when they arrived.
2. Did you (tu) call your mother yesterday?
3. She has never been to France.
4. I used to play football every Saturday.
5. They finished their presentation at 3 p.m.

Answers:

1. Nous étions en train de dîner quand ils sont arrivés. (or: Nous dînions quand ils sont arrivés.)
2. Est-ce que tu as appelé ta mère hier? (or: Tu as appelé ta mère hier?)
3. Elle n’est jamais allée en France.
4. Je jouais au football tous les samedis.
5. Ils ont terminé leur présentation à quinze heures.

Tips for building a consistent practice routine

Practice every day, not in marathon sessions. Research on language acquisition consistently shows that spaced, frequent practice is more effective than cramming. Aim for 15-20 minutes of focused verb work daily rather than a two-hour session on weekends.

Use spaced repetition for conjugation tables. Apps like Anki let you create flashcard decks for irregular verb conjugations. Set the cards to show you forms at increasing intervals, so you review them just before you would forget them. This approach is more efficient than reviewing everything on a fixed schedule.

Shadow authentic French audio. Find a short clip (2-3 minutes) from a French podcast, YouTube video, or radio broadcast, and play it while speaking along as closely as possible. Shadowing builds the link between hearing a verb form and producing it quickly, which drills alone cannot do.

Keep an error log. Every time you make a conjugation error in writing or get corrected by a tutor, write the sentence down, correct it, and add it to a running list. Review this list once a week. Repeated errors are patterns, and patterns can be fixed.

Mix input and output. Watching French content (films, TV shows, news) gives you passive exposure to verb forms in natural contexts. Writing in French, even a short daily journal, forces you to produce those forms yourself. Both matter.

How to use authentic content for verb practice

Once you are working at a B1 or B2 level, authentic content becomes one of the most powerful tools available.

Reading: French news articles and novels use a wide range of tenses, including the passé simple (literary past tense) that you will rarely produce but should recognize. As you read, underline verb forms you cannot immediately identify and look them up.

Listening: French radio (Radio France, France Inter) uses the present tense and passé composé heavily in news reporting. TV5Monde has video content with French subtitles, which lets you read and hear verb forms at the same time.

Speaking: Conversation with a native or near-native speaker is irreplaceable because it forces you to produce verb forms under real-time pressure. A structured lesson with a tutor who gives immediate correction is the fastest way to close the gap between your written accuracy and your spoken fluency.

For more structured activities to complement verb practice, the French grammar practice guide and French language games article both offer activity ideas that keep practice engaging.

The gap between exercises and real speech

These exercises give you accuracy. They build the foundation. But the moment someone asks you a question in real French and you have three seconds to respond, the exercises alone are not enough. That final step, moving from knowing the form to producing it automatically under pressure, requires practice with a real person who can catch your errors and push you further.

A French teacher online can run you through conversation drills, correct your tense choice in context, and design sessions around the exact verb patterns you keep getting wrong. More than 10M+ learners have used italki to close this gap. Reserve your first lesson and find out how quickly your accuracy translates into real confidence.

FAQ

How long does it take to feel comfortable with French verb conjugations?

For regular -er verbs in the present tense, a few weeks of daily practice is enough for most learners to feel solid. Irregular verbs and compound tenses like the passé composé take longer, typically 3-6 months of consistent practice at an A2 to B1 level. The imparfait vs. passé composé distinction often takes until B2 before it feels truly automatic.

Should I memorize conjugation tables or just practice in context?

Both approaches work, and they work best together. Memorizing the table gives you a framework; contextual practice (sentences, conversations, reading) turns that framework into usable knowledge. Start with the table for irregular verbs like être and avoir, then practice those same verbs in as many real sentences as possible.

What is the best order to learn French tenses?

Start with the present tense (all persons, regular and irregular verbs). Then add the passé composé for talking about past events. Then the imparfait for descriptions and habitual past actions. After those three are solid, add the futur proche (aller + infinitive) for near future, then the futur simple. The subjunctive and conditional can come later once the core tenses are automatic.