10.4 Tense, Aspect & the Concordance des Temps

10.4 Tense, Aspect & the Concordance des Temps

[!NOTE] This is a scored criterion, not background grammar. The Morphosyntaxe line of both production grids states that the candidate employs correctly the moods and tenses that the prompt calls for, and examiner guidance places the concordance des temps explicitly under that criterion. A DELF B2 letter proposing reforms that stays in the present tense from beginning to end cannot reach the B2+ band, however clean its agreements. The same system is tested receptively: comprehension items routinely turn on whether an event is presented as completed, ongoing, anterior or hypothetical.

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The B2 Tense Inventory: What You Must Produce and What You Must Merely Recognise

Recognising the passé simple in reading and listening

The passé simple never appears in spoken French and is not expected in your production, but it appears in press features, historical framing and cultural articles — and an item can hinge on it. Learn to decode the high-frequency irregulars rather than to conjugate them:

• être → il fut, ils furent • avoir → il eut, ils eurent
• faire → il fit • venir → il vint • voir → il vit
• prendre → il prit • pouvoir → il put • devoir → il dut
• Regular -er → il adopta, ils adoptèrent • Regular -ir → il réagit

Every one of these is simply a completed past event: read il fut as il a été, and the sentence resolves.

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Aspect: The Imparfait / Passé Composé Boundary

Candidates rarely fail this because they do not know the forms; they fail because they translate an aspectual choice from their own language. French does not ask how long ago? — it asks what kind of view you are taking of the event.

[!TIP] The rupture test. Ask: does this verb break the flow of the narrative, or does it hold the frame around it? Breaks take the passé composé; frames take the imparfait. Adverbials help but never decide alone — pendant deux ans takes either tense depending on whether the two years are presented as a closed block (il a travaillé pendant deux ans) or as the backdrop (il travaillait depuis deux ans).

Anteriority. When one past event precedes another, the earlier one moves to the plus-que-parfait: Le comité a rejeté le texte que la commission avait rédigé six mois plus tôt. Failing to make this shift is one of the most visible B1 signatures in a B2 script.

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The Concordance des Temps in Subordinate Clauses

The rule is mechanical once you identify the tense of the main verb.

MAIN VERB IN THE PRESENT / FUTURE
  ├── simultaneity  → présent          Il affirme que la mesure EST efficace.
  ├── anteriority   → passé composé    Il affirme que la mesure A ÉTÉ efficace.
  └── posteriority  → futur simple     Il affirme que la mesure SERA efficace.

MAIN VERB IN A PAST TENSE
  ├── simultaneity  → imparfait        Il a affirmé que la mesure ÉTAIT efficace.
  ├── anteriority   → plus-que-parfait Il a affirmé que la mesure AVAIT ÉTÉ efficace.
  └── posteriority  → conditionnel     Il a affirmé que la mesure SERAIT efficace.
                      (futur du passé)

That last line is the one that separates registers. Il a annoncé qu'il viendra is an error a corrector notices instantly; il a annoncé qu'il viendrait is the futur du passé, and it is the single most profitable concordance habit to automate before the exam.

Three traps the exam actually sets

1. Si + imparfait never takes the conditionnel. The condition clause carries the imparfait, the result clause the conditionnel: S'il existait une aide, les ménages rénoveraient davantage. Writing si j'aurais is a fatal register marker in French.
2. Après que takes the indicative, not the subjunctive, however often native speakers say otherwise: Après que la loi a été votée… (Avant que does take the subjunctive.)
3. Depuis que takes the indicative and pairs with the tense of real time: Depuis que le télétravail s'est généralisé, les centres-villes se vident.

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Le Discours Rapporté (Reported Speech)

Reported speech is where the tense system, the pronoun system and the deictic system move together. It is unavoidable in the exam: the reading and listening papers are built on journalists reporting what other people said, and your own writing and speaking gain authority from « Le rapport souligne que… » constructions.

Step 1 — Shift the tense (only when the reporting verb is past)

« Nous avons lancé une consultation et nous publierons les résultats » → Le ministère a déclaré qu'il avait lancé une consultation et qu'il publierait les résultats.

Step 2 — Shift pronouns, possessives and deictics

Step 3 — Restructure the clause type

• Statement → que + clause.
• Yes/no question → si + clause: « Êtes-vous favorable ? » → Il a demandé si j'étais favorable.
• Qu'est-ce que → ce que: « Qu'est-ce que vous proposez ? » → Il a demandé ce que je proposais.
• Qu'est-ce qui → ce qui: → Il a demandé ce qui posait problème.
• Question word stays: « Pourquoi refusez-vous ? » → Il a demandé pourquoi je refusais.
• Imperative → de + infinitive: « Réagissez ! » → Il m'a demandé de réagir.

Step 4 — Choose a reporting verb that carries a stance

Dire is the B1 default. At B2, the verb itself should encode the speaker's posture — and this is exactly what Exercise 3 of the reading paper asks you to decode in reverse.

[!WARNING] The journalistic conditional is not a concordance error. « Le dispositif coûterait trois milliards » is not a mistake in tense agreement: it is the conditionnel de distanciation, signalling that the figure is reported but unverified (see section 4.3). Distinguish it from the futur du passé by looking at the main clause — if there is no past reporting verb governing it, the conditional is doing epistemic work, not concordance work.

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Putting It to Work in Each Paper

• Compréhension des écrits. Items asking « Que s'est-il passé avant… ? » are plus-que-parfait items. Items asking whether an outcome is certain or merely alleged are conditional items.
• Compréhension de l'oral. A speaker who moves from passé composé into imparfait is stepping out of the narrative to comment; that shift often marks the sentence that answers the "attitude" question.
• Production écrite. A complaint letter needs the passé composé for what happened, the imparfait for the situation, the plus-que-parfait for what preceded it, and the conditionnel for what you propose. Deploying all four in one paragraph is a visible B2+ signal.
• Production orale. Reported speech lets you bring the trigger document into your exposé without summarising it: « L'auteur souligne que la mesure aurait un coût élevé, mais il reconnaît qu'elle répondrait à une demande sociale. »