You have learned the past compound and preterite in french. you will learn when to use the composite and imperfect past in another lesson, but what do you notice now? in english, compare and contrast these two tenses to the past tense in english. how are the past times in each language? how are they different?

The simple preterit is a cousin of the imperfect French. At preterit, verbs take the ending -ed, except for irregular verbs. When the verb that we want to conjugate to the preterit is composed of a single syllable, we double the last consonant and add the ending -ed at the end and the past composed is a time formed of the auxiliary having or being in the present followed by the past participle of the conjugated verb.

in english,a composite past is translated: by a simple preterite, when it is used, as a simple past, to tell facts belonging to a past past: by a simple perfect present or in be + V-ing, when it expresses a past action still closely related to the present.
Ex. : Brian has passed allhis exam

English         french
      ↓                     ↓
hello             bonjour