Le passé simple

You will be assessed in your grammar quiz, your module exam, and your final exam on recognizing le passé simple. You will not be assessed on how to form the passé simple, just how to recognize it. Le passé simple is a (primarily literary) past tense that corresponds to the simple past tense in English (e.g. I talked ; I played). There is an activity at the bottom of this page to help you practice recognizing le passé simple.

Practice Activities

The following external sites offer a variety of ways to practice le passé simple. Please use these resources to help in recognizing this form.

Le passé simple – 1 – Great site for learning to recognize le passé simple.
Le passé simple – 2
Le passé simple – 3
Le passé simple – 4 – Great site for practicing construction of le passé simple.

Auto-évaluation

Please choose the correct passé simple conjugation for the sentences below. Do not forget that there are irregular forms in the passé simple, too.