Hello everyone! Do you dream of sharing your travel memories with French-speaking friends or simply feeling more at ease during your next trip to France? This blog post is designed as a complete and self-contained French lesson for beginners to intermediate learners (A1-A2). It will help you learn to talk about your past vacations. Together, we will explore essential vocabulary, understand the basics of past tense grammar, and most importantly, put everything into practice. Ready for this linguistic adventure? Let’s discover how to turn your travel memories into enriching conversations in French.
When traveling, choosing accommodation is important. Here are some common options with their translations:
To practice these words and use them in your next sentences, here are some examples in the past tense:
Using the passé composé directly helps contextualize learning vocabulary with the grammatical structure we will explore next.
Getting around is an essential part of any vacation. Here are some common modes of transportation:
For example, you might say:
These examples show how to combine transportation vocabulary with movement verbs in the past tense.
Activities make vacations memorable. Here are some suggestions of things you might have done:
To talk about your activities, you could say:
This vocabulary helps add interesting details to your stay.
To share your impressions, adjectives are essential:
For example, you can express your satisfaction by saying:
These words help you paint a picture of your experiences.
Now that we have the basic vocabulary, let’s focus on how to form sentences to talk about your vacations in the past. In French, the most commonly used tense to describe completed past actions is the passé composé. It is equivalent to the simple past or the present perfect in English.
The majority of verbs in French use the auxiliary avoir in the passé composé. Here is the conjugation of the verb avoir in the present tense:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | J’ai | Nous avons |
| 2nd person | Tu as | Vous avez |
| 3rd person | Il/Elle a | Ils/Elles ont |
To form the past participle of regular verbs, here are the rules:
Here are some examples of vacation-related verbs conjugated in the passé composé with avoir:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | J’ai visité... (I visited...) | Nous avons regardé... (We watched...) |
| 2nd person | Tu as mangé... (You ate...) | Vous avez aimé... (You liked...) |
| 3rd person | Il/Elle a pris... (He/She took...) | Ils/Elles ont fait... (They did...) |
A smaller group of verbs uses the auxiliary être in the passé composé. These are often verbs of movement or change of state. Here is the conjugation of the verb être in the present tense:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | Je suis | Nous sommes |
| 2nd person | Tu es | Vous êtes |
| 3rd person | Il/Elle est | Ils/Elles sont |
Examples of verbs using être:
An important rule to remember with the auxiliary être is that the past participle agrees in gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural) with the subject.
For example:
With the auxiliary être, the past participle agrees in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) with the subject:
Complete Example: "Pendant mes vacances d'été, je suis allé(e) en Italie en avion et j'ai visité Rome." (During my summer vacation, I went to Italy by plane and visited Rome.)
👩 Amélie : Salut Thomas ! Ça va ? Tu as passé de bonnes vacances ?
🧑 Thomas : Salut Amélie ! Oui, super ! Je suis allé à la montagne avec ma famille. Et toi, tu as fait quoi ?
👩Amélie : Moi, je suis restée à la maison, mais je suis allée à la plage quelques jours avec des amis.
🧑Thomas : Ah, c'était bien ? Tu as nagé ?
👩Amélie : Oui, j'ai nagé et j'ai bronzé. Il a fait très beau ! Et à la montagne, qu'est-ce que tu as fait ? Tu as fait de la randonnée ?
🧑Thomas : Oui, on a fait beaucoup de randonnées. Les paysages étaient magnifiques ! On a aussi visité un petit village.
👩Amélie : C'est chouette ! Vous avez logé dans un hôtel ou un gîte ?
🧑Thomas : On a loué un petit appartement. C'était très confortable. Et toi, tu as logé où quand tu es allée à la plage ?
👩Amélie : On a dormi dans une auberge de jeunesse. C'était sympa et pas cher.
🧑Thomas : Génial ! On doit se raconter tout ça plus en détail la semaine prochaine !
👩Amélie : Oui, à bientôt !
1️⃣ L'année dernière, je ______ (aller) à la plage avec mes amis.
2️⃣ Nous ______ (visiter) beaucoup de monuments intéressants pendant notre séjour à Paris.
3️⃣ Tu ______ (prendre) des photos magnifiques de la mer.
4️⃣ Ils ______ (rester) dans un hôtel très confortable près du centre-ville.
5️⃣ Vous ______ (faire) une longue randonnée en montagne.
Match the French word with its English translation.
| francais | anglais | |
|---|---|---|
|
Un hôtel 1 Un camping 2 Nager 3 En train 4 Super 5 |
A Camping ground B To swim C By train D Amazing E A hotel |
Answer the following questions in French using the vocabulary and the passé composé you have learned:
To make French a part of your life, here are some ideas:
Exercise 1:
1️⃣ Je suis allé(e) à la plage avec mes amis. (I went to the beach with my friends.)
2️⃣ Nous avons visité beaucoup de monuments intéressants pendant notre séjour à Paris. (We visited many interesting monuments during our stay in Paris.)
3️⃣ Tu as pris des photos magnifiques de la mer. (You took beautiful photos of the sea.)
4️⃣ Ils sont restés dans un hôtel très confortable près du centre-ville. (They stayed in a very comfortable hotel near the city center.)
5️⃣ Vous avez fait une longue randonnée en montagne. (You went on a long hike in the mountains.)
Exercise 2:
1. un hôtel - e) a hotel
2. un camping - a) a camping ground
3. nager - b) to swim
4. en train - c) by train
5. super - d) amazing
Congratulations! You’ve completed a full lesson on talking about your vacations in French. You’ve learned essential vocabulary and the basics of the passé composé. Remember, regular practice is the key to progress. So, the next time you think about your last vacation, try describing it in French.
And if you’d like to go further, why not book a personalized lesson for tailored guidance? Good luck, and see you soon for new lessons!