Grammar: Pronouns to Number, quantity, dates and time: OxfordAQA IGCSE French Skills and Techniques

Scope of this grammar block

This is oxfordaqa igcse french grammar: pronouns to number, quantity, dates and time set out systematically, as the specification itself presents it: pronouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and number, quantity, dates and time. Considered together, this grammar: pronouns to number, quantity, dates and time oxfordaqa igcse block forms the syntactic core of the qualification. Where the earlier grammar block (nouns, articles, adjectives, adverbs, quantifiers) governs agreement within the noun phrase, the material addressed here governs the structure of the sentence itself: who is doing what, to whom, when, and in what tense. A precise treatment of igcse 9265 grammar: pronouns to number, quantity, dates and time is set out below, topic by topic.

Pronouns

The specification requires personal pronouns across all subjects, including the impersonal on; relative pronouns qui and que in full, with dont required for receptive knowledge only; object pronouns, both direct and indirect, together with their correct position and order in a sentence; disjunctive (emphatic) pronouns; demonstrative pronouns ça and cela for active use, with celui required only receptively; possessive pronouns such as le mien, again receptive only; indefinite pronouns such as quelqu'un; interrogative pronouns qui and que; and the adverbial pronouns y and en.

Worked example

Consider the sentence "Je le lui donne" (I give it to him/her). This single clause demonstrates the required order of object pronouns precisely: the direct object pronoun le precedes the indirect object pronoun lui, both of which precede the verb. A candidate who reverses this order, producing "je lui le donne", commits an error the mark scheme treats as a structural fault rather than a minor slip, because pronoun order is governed by a fixed rule, not by preference.

Common mistake

Confusing y (referring to a place or an idea previously mentioned, roughly "there" or "about it") with en (referring to a quantity or a thing introduced with de, roughly "of it" or "some"). "J'y vais" (I am going there) and "j'en veux" (I want some of it) are frequently interchanged by candidates who have not drilled the distinction between location/reference and quantity/partitive use.

Verbs

The verb system required is extensive: regular and irregular verbs, including reflexive verbs, across all persons in the singular and plural, in negative and interrogative forms; the two modes of address, tu and vous; impersonal verbs such as il faut; and verbs followed by an infinitive, with or without an intervening preposition. The required tense range is: present, perfect, perfect infinitive, imperfect (with avoir, être and faire required actively, and other common verbs in the imperfect required receptively), immediate future, future, conditional (with vouloir and aimer required actively), pluperfect, the passive voice in the present tense actively and in the future, imperfect and perfect tenses receptively, the imperative, the present participle including its use after en, and the present subjunctive in commonly used expressions, required receptively.

Worked example

Distinguishing the perfect from the imperfect is the single most heavily tested tense contrast in this specification. "Je regardais la télé quand le téléphone a sonné" (I was watching television when the phone rang) uses the imperfect (regardais) for an ongoing background action and the perfect (a sonné) for the single completed event that interrupted it. A candidate who writes "j'ai regardé la télé quand le téléphone sonnait" has reversed the logic of the sentence entirely, describing a single glance at the television interrupted by an ongoing ringing telephone, which is not the intended meaning.

Common mistake

Treating the immediate future (aller + infinitive) and the future tense (regular future endings) as interchangeable in formal writing. Both are grammatically valid and both appear in the specification, but examiners reward range: a written response that uses only the immediate future throughout demonstrates a narrower command of tense than one that deploys both immediate future and future tense with a clear, deliberate distinction between near-certain plans and more distant intentions.

Prepositions

Required prepositions include à (with its contracted forms au, à l', à la, aux), de (with du, de l', de la, des), après, avant, avec, chez, contre, dans, depuis, derrière, devant, entre, pendant, pour, sans, sur, sous and vers, together with common compound prepositions such as à côté de, près de, en face de, à cause de and au lieu de.

Worked example

Depuis deserves particular attention because it interacts directly with tense choice, a point covered explicitly under number, quantity, dates and time below. "J'habite ici depuis trois ans" (I have lived here for three years) uses the present tense with depuis to describe an action that began in the past and continues into the present, a construction with no direct equivalent in English tense logic and therefore a frequent source of translation error in both directions.

Common mistake

Selecting chez when dans or à would be correct. Chez is used specifically with a person (chez moi, chez le médecin, at my house, at the doctor's) and cannot be used with a place name or a building type in the way "at" or "to" can in English. "Je vais chez l'école" is not valid French; the correct form is "je vais à l'école".

Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions required include car, donc, ensuite, et, mais, ou, ou bien and puis; subordinating conjunctions include comme, lorsque, parce que, puisque, quand, que and si.

Worked example

Parce que and puisque both translate as "because", but puisque carries a stronger implication that the reason is already known or obvious to the listener, closer to "since" or "given that" in English. "Je ne peux pas sortir puisqu'il pleut" implies the rain is visibly evident to both speakers, while parce que is the neutral, general-purpose choice. This is a nuance worth knowing for the higher range of the writing and speaking mark schemes, which reward precision of register.

Common mistake

Overusing et and mais as the only connectors in extended writing, producing a string of short clauses joined by the same two words. Varying connectors, including donc (so, therefore), ensuite (next) and car (because, more formal than parce que), demonstrates the range of structures the writing mark scheme explicitly rewards.

Number, quantity, dates and time

This final category is deliberately broad, and its central grammatical point, repeated from the prepositions section because of its importance, is the use of depuis with the present tense for an action still ongoing, and with the imperfect tense for an action that was ongoing at a point in the past.

Worked example

Compare "j'apprends le français depuis quatre ans" (I have been learning French for four years, still ongoing, present tense) with "j'apprenais le français depuis quatre ans quand j'ai déménagé" (I had been learning French for four years when I moved, ongoing at a past point, imperfect tense). English uses a perfect or pluperfect construction in both cases; French requires the present or imperfect. This mismatch between the two languages is precisely why it is tested directly in the translation components of both the reading and writing papers.

Common mistake

Translating "depuis" constructions using the French perfect tense by direct analogy with the English "have been", producing "j'ai appris le français depuis quatre ans", which is not correct usage. The present or imperfect tense is required with depuis regardless of how the equivalent English sentence is structured.

A reference table for the five categories

Each row of this table represents a distinct grammatical function, and a strong candidate can identify, in any given sentence, which of these five functions is being tested before selecting the correct form. That diagnostic habit, asking "what is this sentence actually asking me to control?", is worth building deliberately rather than leaving to instinct.

Self-check questions

• Can you correctly order two object pronouns in a single sentence, such as "je le lui donne"?
• Can you explain, precisely, when to use the imperfect rather than the perfect tense?
• Can you use depuis correctly with both the present and the imperfect tense?
• Can you distinguish chez from à and dans in three separate example sentences?
• Can you vary your connectors across a piece of extended writing rather than relying on et and mais alone?

Practice questions

These oxfordaqa igcse french practice questions test the material above directly.

1. Rewrite "je donne le livre à ma sœur" replacing both nouns with the correct object pronouns, in the correct order.
2. Choose the correct tense: "Il ___ (regarder, imperfect) la télé quand le téléphone ___ (sonner, perfect)."
3. Translate: "I have lived in this town for six years."
4. Complete: "Je vais ___ le médecin" (choose the correct preposition).
5. Join these two sentences using a subordinating conjunction of your choice: "Il pleut. Je reste à la maison."

Pronoun order, tense selection and the behaviour of depuis are three of the most reliably tested structural points in this specification. Mastering them delivers a return on revision time out of proportion to how compact they look on the page.

Consolidating these oxfordaqa igcse french revision notes

A formal, systematic approach suits this material well: work through pronouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and number, quantity, dates and time in that order, since each category interacts with the ones before it, most obviously in how object pronoun position depends on verb structure, and how depuis depends on both preposition knowledge and correct tense selection. Treat this page as reference material to revisit rather than a single read-through, and cross-check it against the earlier grammar block covering nouns through quantifiers, since agreement and structure together account for the majority of grammatical marks available across all four papers. These oxfordaqa igcse french notes, read alongside the vocabulary and theme deep dives on this platform, complete the grammatical foundation this specification is built on. Consider the material above oxfordaqa igcse french explained at the level of precision an examiner marking the translation and free-writing tasks actually applies.