Week 7 Day 1: Simple Future Tense Copy

Last week, we learned about the verb “aller,” specifically how to express the immediate future in French (aller + infinitive). In today’s lesson, we will learn how to conjugate verbs to express the “official” future tense in French. This will give you more choices for expressing future events in French.

•  The conjugation of the simple future tense is relatively easy because it has less irregular verbs than the present tense. For all verbs you simply add the following suffixes to the infinitive form:

Listen to Week 7 Day 1 Track 1

If the verb ends with “–re,” please remember to drop the “e” before adding the suffix.

Listen to Week 7 Day 1 Track 2

•  prendre  ➝    je prendrai, tu prendras, il prendra, nous prendrons, vous prendrez, ils prendront

There are some irregular verbs to learn, but for now you only need to memorize the three most commonly used ones:

•  avoir  ➝    J’aurai, tu auras…

•  être    ➝    Je serai, tu seras…

•  aller   ➝    J’irai, tu iras…

 As in English, the future tense is used to talk about events that will occur in the future. The difference between French and English, however, is that in French, if the main clause is in simple future tense, then the dependent clause is also in the simple future tense; in English, the dependent clause will be in the present tense. Let’s look at an example:

•  Elle ira à Paris quand elle aura le temps. - She will go to Paris when she has time.

The future tense of “avoir et être” is sometimes used to express probability in the present to indicate something that is likely true. For example:

•  Le professeur ne demande pas nos devoirs. Il sera distrait. - The teacher does not ask about our homework. He’s probably distracted.

Listen to the following dialogue and try to identify the verb that is in the simple future tense:

Vocabulary: Simple Future Tense

Sharpen Your Knowledge with Exercises

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

Exercise 4