Need a passé composé speaking activity that is so easy-to-use with your beginning French students? This is one of my favorite ways to get students comfortable with the passé composé, because they’ll be speaking and listening in French with an activity that is simple and repetitive enough to help them gain confidence before moving on to more complicated French discussion prompts.
When first moving from the present tense to the passé composé, kids need a lot of practice to use the form of avoir and the past participle correctly.
This game is a lot of fun, because they’ll ask and answer questions using the familiar j’ai… qui a … format, but this time, instead of adding an object, they’ll be adding the past participle of the verb shown on the card!
Not familiar with J’ai… qui a… ? Here’s how you play:
The object of the game is to go full circle with all of the cards. The player with “J’ai la première carte” starts and the game ends with “Qui a la première carte?” You’ll get 30 cards so you can easily play this with big classes. If you have more than 30 students, simply pair a few student up, and if you have less than 30 students, give some students two cards.
Before doing this passé composé speaking activity, pass out the included notes sheet so students can review the forms of the past particles and the conjugations of avoir. It’s a great French verbs reference sheet to have on-hand through the year!
How to prepare this passé composé speaking activity:
- Decide if you want to use the cards with or without the past participles.
- Print out the J’ai… qui a… cards and cut them out.
- Pass out one card to each student (or double up as needed).
The student with the first card starts the game. They’ll ask “Qui a attendu ?” The second student will answer: “J’ai attendu. Qui a écouté ?”
The game will continue as students listen for their card. They’ll answer with “J’ai + the verb shown on the card.” Then, they’ll ask “Qui a + the other verb shown.”
If you want to challenge students during this passé composé speaking activity while still providing support, you can use the cards with images-only so they’ll need to provide the past participle of the verb shown. You can provide support by printing this vocabulary sheet for them to use during the game.
Teachers love this French speaking activity!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “This one was well done, quick and easy to implement, and a big time saver for me. Definitely worth the cost.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “My students love the loop style games. It was a great chance to talk about the auditory discrimination between attendu et entendu. EXCELLENT PRODUCT”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “This was a great activity for one of my less talkative classes! Thank you!”
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