The passé composé — with "avoir" and "être"

The passé composé is the everyday French past tense — "I ate", "I have spoken", "she arrived". It is made of two parts: an auxiliary verb in the present (usually avoir) plus a past participle.

The recipe with "avoir"

Insert the past participle

The verbs with "être"

A small, important group of verbs — mostly about coming and going — forms the passé composé with être instead of avoir. With être the participle agrees with the subject (add -e for feminine, -s for plural).

Insert the être participle (mind the agreement)

Choose the right form

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