French Grammar guide

SwiftFrench has put together a series of free guides covering the French grammar topics that cause the most difficulty for GCSE, A-Level and High School students. Each guide explains the logic behind the rules — not just the rules themselves.

Read them in order or jump to the topic you need. All guides are free. The full SwiftFrench engine suite is available at swiftfrench.com.

Want to discuss these topics with other students and parents? Join our free Facebook group — you'll also find working images of all the SwiftFrench engines so you can see exactly how they look before you buy: French & Spanish Revision for GCSE and A-Level — Students and Parents.

Contents

French Verb Engine

Why French Verb Tenses Feel So Hard — And What Actually Works

The Secret Behind French Verb Conjugation — Stems and Endings

Master 21 French Verbs — Unlock Thousands

How the Table Works — Up and Down Construction

The Tense Roadmap — Why the Order Matters

Passé Composé — Avoir or Être? Here's How to Know

Free French Verb Workbook — Download Here

Get Ahead of the Class — How the SwiftFrench System Actually Works

The Subjunctive Demystified

What to Look For in a French Revision Resource — A Parent's Guide

French Grammar Engines 

French Pronouns — Why They're Confusing and How to Fix It

French Questions — Three Ways to Ask, One System to Learn

De vs À — Why French Prepositions Confuse Everyone and How to Fix It

French Adjective Placement — Why Getting It Wrong Changes the Meaning

French Adverb Placement — Why Instinct Gets It Wrong

The Complete SwiftFrench Grammar Suite

French Verb Engine 

Why French Verb Tenses Feel So Hard — And What Actually Works 

Ask most students to conjugate a French verb and watch what happens. They reach for a list. They try to remember which ending goes with which person. They get it right in a test and wrong in an essay.

The problem isn't the verbs. It's the way they're taught.

Most French courses present verbs as individual items to memorise — one verb at a time, one tense at a time. By the time a student reaches exam level, they have dozens of half-remembered conjugation tables and no way to connect them.

There's a better way

French verbs aren't random. They belong to families — groups of verbs that share the same conjugation pattern. Learn the pattern, and you can conjugate every verb in the family without memorising each one individually.

The SwiftFrench Verb Engine is built around four verb families:

🐘 Elephants — être, avoir, faire, aller. High-frequency, highly irregular. Students need to know these cold because they underpin every tense in the language.

😊 Smileys — parler, aimer. The regular -ER family. The most common verb pattern in French. Master these and students can conjugate thousands of verbs.

😢 Crying Faces — finir, partir, venir, vouloir, pouvoir, devoir, vendre, prendre, mettre, courir. Irregular or semi-irregular. Each one teaches a family pattern that unlocks many related verbs.

🎵 Music Verbs — payer, appeler, jeter, manger, commencer. Spelling-change verbs. Regular conjugation logic with predictable tweaks that protect pronunciation.

Why 21 verbs?

The engine uses 21 carefully selected high-frequency verbs because together they demonstrate the main behaviours of French verbs. When a student learns prendre, they can immediately conjugate apprendre, comprendre and surprendre. When they learn manger, they unlock partager, nager and dozens more.

These 21 verbs are master keys. Not a list to memorise — a system to understand.

All conjugations in the SwiftFrench Verb Engine are verified against Larousse.

The Secret Behind French Verb Conjugation — Stems and Endings 

Every French verb conjugation is built from two parts: a stem and an ending. This isn't a secret — it's in every French textbook. But most courses don't make the logic explicit enough for students to actually use it.

The stem

The stem is the fixed part of the verb — the part that carries the meaning. For parler, the stem is parl-. For finir, it's fin-. For most regular verbs, you find the stem by removing the infinitive ending (-er, -ir, -re).

The ending

The ending changes depending on who is doing the action and when. The ending attaches to the stem to make the complete conjugated form.

Je parle. Tu parles. Il parle. Nous parlons. Vous parlez. Ils parlent.

The stem stays the same. The ending changes. That's the whole system.

Why the verb families matter

Different verb families use different stems and different endings. That's what makes them families — they share the same pattern. Once you know the pattern for one verb in a family, you know the pattern for all of them.

The honest truth about the Elephants

Être, avoir, faire and aller are irregular. Their stems change across tenses and don't follow the standard rules. There's no shortcut — students need to know these verbs well. But there's a reason they're the Elephant family: they're impossible to ignore, and once you've learned them, you never forget them.

All conjugations verified against Larousse.

Master 21 French Verbs — Unlock Thousands 

Here's something most French students don't know: you don't need to memorise thousands of French verbs. You need to recognise which family a verb belongs to, and apply the pattern.

How the predictive system works

prendre → apprendre, comprendre, surprendre, reprendre, entreprendre

partir → sortir, dormir, servir, sentir, mentir

mettre → permettre, promettre, transmettre, remettre, soumettre

vendre → revendre, défendre, descendre, entendre, attendre

payer → essayer, balayer, employer, nettoyer, envoyer

parler → travailler, regarder, demander, écouter, chercher, aimer

The exam payoff

An exam question asks a student to use choisir in the passé composé. They've never seen it on a conjugation list. But they know finir — same family, same pattern. Stem: chois-. Past participle: choisi. Auxiliary: avoir. J'ai choisi.

That's not guessing. That's a system working exactly as it should.

All conjugations verified against Larousse.

How the Table Works — Up and Down Construction 

Most French verb tables just sit there on the page. A wall of conjugations with no logic to hold onto. The SwiftFrench engine works differently. It has a direction. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Two directions. Two types of tense.

For most tenses — Présent, Imparfait, Futur Simple, Conditionnel, Subjonctif — the table works upwards.

1. Go along the row for your chosen verb to find its stem

2. Go up to find the ending for the person you need

3. Combine them — done

Let's try it with parler in the Présent. The stem is parl-. Go up to je — the ending is -e. Combine: je parle. Go up to ils — the ending is -ent. Combine: ils parlent.

Now the DOWN tenses

Futur Proche and Passé Composé use an auxiliary verb. So the table gives you two things in sequence, read going downwards.

1. Go along the row for your chosen person to find the auxiliary verb form

2. Go down to add the infinitive (Futur Proche) or past participle (Passé Composé)

3. Combine them

Je vais parler. J'ai parlé.

The direction change isn't random — it reflects how those tenses actually work grammatically. The table makes the structure visible.

All conjugations verified against Larousse.

The Tense Roadmap — Why the Order Matters

When a student first opens a French textbook, the tenses can feel like they've been arranged at random. The SwiftFrench engine teaches tenses in a specific sequence — and that sequence is deliberate.

The 7 stages:

Stage 1 — Présent: The foundation. All 21 verbs, introduced one family at a time. Five variants because each family brings its own stem logic.

Stage 2 — Futur Proche: Aller + infinitive. No new verbs. Students can already talk about the future. A deliberate confidence win.

Stage 3 — Passé Composé (Avoir): The most common way to talk about the past. Avoir + past participle covers the majority of verbs students encounter.

Stage 4 — Passé Composé (Être): Taught separately because auxiliary selection and agreement are genuinely new concepts. First major milestone in the sequence.

Stage 5 — Imparfait: The second past tense. The stem comes from the nous present form — Stage 1 pays off again here.

Stage 6 — Futur Simple + Conditionnel: Taught together because they share the same stem. Also produces the most immediately useful phrases — je voudrais, je pourrais, je devrais.

Stage 7 — Subjonctif: The final stage. A-Level territory. Makes most sense once everything else is in place.

This isn't a random syllabus. It's a sequence designed around how students actually learn.

All conjugations verified against Larousse.

Passé Composé — Avoir or Être? Here's How to Know 

If there's one thing that trips up French students more than anything else, it's this. Which auxiliary — avoir or être?

Most teaching approaches give students a list to memorise. DR MRS VANDERTRAMP. Sixteen verbs that take être. Learn the list, problem solved. Except it isn't solved.

The cleaner way to think about it

The vast majority of French verbs take avoir. That's the default. Être is the exception — mostly verbs of motion or change of state. Going, coming, arriving, leaving, being born, dying.

The engine teaches Passé Composé in two separate stages. Stage 3 covers avoir — the majority, the default. Students get comfortable with the structure before Stage 4 introduces être and its agreement rules.

The agreement rules

Il est allé. Elle est allée. Ils sont allés. Elles sont allées.

Once students understand why it happens — that être verbs behave more like adjectives in this respect — it becomes a pattern rather than an arbitrary rule.

All conjugations verified against Larousse.

Free French Verb Workbook — Download Here 

If you've been following this series, you'll know how the SwiftFrench engine works. This is where you get to try it.

We've put together a free workbook built on the same 21 verbs and the same four verb families covered in these guides. It includes the first variant of the engine — the starting point of the full scaffolded sequence — so you can see exactly how the system works in practice.

Free download. No catch.

Download here: https://payhip.com/b/9OFpH

Get Ahead of the Class — How the SwiftFrench System Actually Works 

Most French revision resources are reactive. Your child falls behind in class, you find something to help them catch up. SwiftFrench works the other way around.

The scaffold

The French Verb Engine comes with 12 variant sheets arranged across 7 stages. Each variant introduces a small amount of new content while consolidating everything covered before it. The full engine is always visible, but inactive sections are greyed out.

For teachers

Each variant is a ready-made lesson resource. Three variants deserve special treatment as milestones: V08 (both Passé Composé columns complete), V10 (six tenses done), and V12 — the complete engine.

For students working independently

A motivated student doesn't have to wait for the teacher. They can work through the variant sheets at home, at their own pace, using the free workbook as a starting point. By the time the teacher introduces a tense in class, the student already knows it.

That's not just confidence. That's a structural advantage.

The full journey

When a student reaches V12 — the complete engine — every cell is filled in. All 21 verbs, all 7 tenses, every pattern visible on one page. The complete engine is provided in both colour and black and white, and as a PNG image. Phone-sized. Available the moment a student needs it.

Get the SwiftFrench Verb Engine: https://payhip.com/b/VvfLB

The Subjunctive Demystified 

Of all the topics that make A-Level French students nervous, the Subjunctive is the one that comes up most. It isn't complicated — once you understand what it's actually for.

What the Subjunctive is

English has a Subjunctive too. "I suggest that he be on time." "If I were you." The mood exists in English — it's just mostly invisible. In French it's more visible, and more frequently required.

Il faut que tu viennes. — It's necessary that you come. Je veux qu'elle soit là. — I want her to be there.

The trigger is almost always a specific set of expressions — il faut que, je veux que, bien que, pour que. Learn the triggers, and you know when to use it.

Why it feels hard

For most verbs, the Subjunctive stem comes directly from the ils form of the present tense. Ils parlent → stem parl- → que je parle. If a student knows their present tense well, they're already most of the way there.

How the engine handles it

The Subjunctive is Stage 7. By the time a student reaches it, they've already worked through six tenses. The patterns are familiar. The engine shows the Subjunctive forms of all 21 verbs in context. The irregular forms — être, avoir — are shown separately.

All conjugations verified against Larousse.

Get the SwiftFrench Verb Engine: https://payhip.com/b/VvfLB

What to Look For in a French Revision Resource — A Parent's Guide 

The internet will offer you no shortage of solutions. Here's what actually matters.

Does it explain the logic or just present the facts?

A conjugation table tells a student what the answer is. A good resource explains why — what pattern produces that answer and how to apply it to a verb they've never seen before.

Does it reduce the workload or just repackage it?

A small number of high-frequency verbs represent the main patterns in the language. A resource that helps students master those patterns first — and shows how they unlock thousands of other verbs — is doing something fundamentally different.

Is it designed for how students actually learn?

Good resources reveal content progressively, building confidence at each stage rather than front-loading complexity.

Can you trust the content?

Verified against a named dictionary is a specific, checkable statement. "Checked by experts" is not.

Does it work in the real world?

Variant sheets are designed in black and white for school photocopiers. The complete engine is provided in both colour and black and white, and as a PNG image — phone-sized, available the moment a student needs it.

SwiftFrench was designed with all of this in mind. 21 carefully selected verbs. A progressive scaffolding sequence across 7 stages and 12 variants. Every conjugation verified against Larousse. It doesn't ask students to memorise more. It gives them a system for memorising less.

Get the SwiftFrench Verb Engine: https://payhip.com/b/VvfLB

French Grammar Engines 

French Pronouns — Why They're Confusing and How to Fix It 

A student learns le, la, les in one lesson. Then lui, leur in another. Then y and en somewhere near the end of term. Each one taught in isolation. Then an exam question asks them to use two pronouns in the same sentence and everything falls apart.

The problem isn't the pronouns. It's that nobody showed them the stack.

What the stack is

French pronouns follow a fixed order — a vertical sequence that never changes. When you need more than one pronoun, you read down the stack and build your sequence in order. The SwiftFrench Pronoun Engine makes that stack explicit and visual.

The 95% rule

Almost everything in French — every tense, every construction, every negative — uses exactly the same pronoun column. The only exception is the affirmative imperative. Donne-le-moi. That's roughly 5% of usage. The engine separates these two columns clearly.

Three constructions, one system

With a simple verb — Il le voit. The stack sits before the verb. With a compound tense — Il l'a vu. The stack sits before the auxiliary. With an infinitive — Il veut le voir. The stack sits before the infinitive.

Same stack, same order, different position.

What else the engine covers

Stressed pronouns and exactly when to use them. The NE...X constructions — pas, plus, jamais, rien, personne. Common contractions. And the agreement rule: with avoir, past participles agree with a preceding direct object pronoun.

Get the SwiftFrench Pronoun Engine: https://payhip.com/b/m4H6a

French Questions — Three Ways to Ask, One System to Learn 

French has three ways to ask a question. Most students learn one, vaguely know another exists, and have never heard of the third. In an exam, that costs marks.

The three strategies

Yes/No questions — 80% of spoken French: Tu manges ? Est-ce que tu manges ? Tu manges, n'est-ce pas ?

Standard WH questions — 15%: Qu'est-ce que tu manges ? Tu manges où ?

Inversion — 5%: Manges-tu ? Où manges-tu ? Formal and written French only.

Why the frequency matters

Most French courses teach inversion first because it looks most "grammatically correct." But it's the rarest form in actual usage. The SwiftFrench Question Engine leads with what's most common and frames inversion as the exception it actually is.

Mr. -t-

The inserted t in mange-t-il, a-t-il — called Mr. -t- in the engine — is a letter that exists purely to avoid an awkward vowel clash. It's not a grammatical ending. It's just French being particular about how things sound.

Get the SwiftFrench Question Engine: https://payhip.com/b/s1cSt

De vs À — Why French Prepositions Confuse Everyone and How to Fix It 

Ask a French student when to use de and when to use à and you'll get a blank stare. The reason isn't that the rules are complicated. It's that nobody has shown them in the right order.

The hierarchy — top level wins

Level 1 — De replacing an article: After a negative, after a quantity word, after a number — de replaces the article completely. Je n'ai pas de livre. Beaucoup de livres. If this applies, stop here.

Level 2 — De with quantities and partitives: De l'eau. Des amis. Manger du pain. If this applies, stop here.

Level 3 — Fixed meaning-based uses: De for origin, cause, content, material. À for destination, recipient, time, manner. Venir de Paris. Donner à Marie. If this applies, stop here.

Level 4 — Verb-governed rules: Avoir besoin de. S'intéresser à. Répondre à. If this applies, stop here.

Level 5 — Verbs that take both with different meanings: Manquer de quelque chose — to lack. Manquer à quelqu'un — to be missed by someone. Penser de — opinion. Penser à — to think about.

Level 1 always beats Level 5. Once students understand that, the uncertainty disappears.

Get the SwiftFrench Preposition Engine: https://payhip.com/b/XUBuw

French Adjective Placement — Why Getting It Wrong Changes the Meaning 

Most students learn that adjectives go after the noun. Then they learn BAGS — Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size — and that certain adjectives go before. What nobody tells them is that some adjectives change meaning entirely depending on where they sit. And those adjectives appear in exams.

When position changes meaning

Un ancien professeur — a former teacher. Un professeur ancien — a very old teacher.

Un grand homme — a great man. Un homme grand — a tall man.

Un pauvre homme — an unfortunate man. Un homme pauvre — a financially poor man.

Ma propre chambre — my own room. Une chambre propre — a clean room.

A student who only knows the BAGS rule reads un ancien professeur and thinks "an old teacher." In a reading comprehension paper, that's a lost mark.

The four-level system — top level wins

Level 1 — Fixed adjectives always go before the noun. Beau, bon, grand, petit, jeune, nouveau. No exceptions.

Level 2 — Meaning-dependent adjectives change meaning based on position. This is what most students don't know — and what exams test.

Level 3 — BAGS-type adjectives go before the noun for beauty, age, goodness or size in the normal, unmarked way.

Level 4 — Everything else goes after the noun. Colours, nationalities, shapes, technical descriptions. This is the default.

The agreement rule that applies everywhere

Regardless of position, adjectives agree with the noun in gender and number. Un bon ami. Une bonne amie. Deux bons amis. Deux bonnes amies. This rule never changes.

Get the SwiftFrench Adjectives Engine: https://payhip.com/b/4MsPB

French Adverb Placement — Why Instinct Gets It Wrong 

In English, adverb placement is largely instinctive. "He often eats that" or "he eats that often" — both sound fine. French doesn't work that way. Adverb placement follows rules, and those rules are tested in exams.

Level 1 — Mandatory placement

Time adverbs go at the end of the sentence. Il mange demain. Il arrive bientôt. Place adverbs go at the end of the sentence. Il mange ici. Il habite là. Connecting adverbs go at the front. D'abord, il mange. Ensuite, il part. Negation adverbs follow ne directly. Il ne mange jamais. Il ne mange plus.

If your adverb falls into one of these categories, place it accordingly and stop.

Level 2 — Flexible placement

When no mandatory rule applies, some adverbs can be placed in multiple positions for emphasis or style. For secondary level exams this level is not explicitly required — Level 3 default is sufficient. For students aiming higher, this is where that skill lives.

Level 3 — Default placement

Adverbs sit after the verb in a simple tense and after the auxiliary in a compound tense.

Il mange souvent ça. — He often eats that. Il a souvent mangé ça. — He often ate that.

Why the tense distinction matters

In the Passé Composé, the adverb sits between the auxiliary and the past participle — not after the whole verb phrase.

Il a souvent mangé ça. — correct. Il a mangé souvent ça. — incorrect.

This specific error appears regularly in exam writing papers and costs marks. The engine shows both tenses side by side.

Get the SwiftFrench Adverbs Engine: https://payhip.com/b/3Rwn5

The Complete SwiftFrench Grammar Suite

Each engine in the suite was built around the same principle: replace guesswork with a decision system. Not rules to memorise. Not lists to learn. A process that works every time.

What's in the suite

The French Verb Engine: 21 verbs. 7 tenses. 12 scaffold variants across 7 stages. Verified against Larousse.

The Pronoun Engine: The fixed stacking order for French pronoun placement. Two columns — one for 95% of usage, one for the affirmative imperative.

The Question Engine: Three question strategies organised by frequency. 80% of spoken French uses the simplest form.

The Preposition Engine: Five levels, top level wins. De vs à made predictable and teachable.

The Adjectives Engine: Four levels of placement logic, including the meaning-changing adjectives most students have never been properly taught.

The Adverbs Engine: Mandatory, flexible and default placement. Simple and compound tenses side by side.

One page per topic. A visual hierarchy. A decision process that replaces intuition with structure. Designed in black and white for school photocopiers. Available as PNG for phone-sized reference anywhere.

$55 for the complete suite — a 39% saving against individual engine pricing.

Get the Complete SwiftFrench Grammar Suite: https://payhip.com/b/TVrYv

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