How do you form the future tense?

The future tense, just like in English, is used to discuss events that will take place in the future. For example, you might use it to discuss your plans for the summer, or even what you are going to have for dinner. To form the future tense with regular verbs, you just use the entire verb as the stem, and then add the following endings:

-ai

-as

-a

-ons

-ez

-ont

For example, ‘parler’ (to speak) would be conjugated as follows:

Je parlerai

Tu parleras

Il/Elle parlera

Nous parlerons

Vous parlerez

Ils/Elles parleront

With regular verbs ending in –re, suche as descendre (to go down), the final –e is removed before adding the future endings. There are a few irregular verbs, such as avoir (instead of using the whole verb as the stem, it becomes 'aur-') and être (which becomes 'ser-'). Althogh the stem of the verb changes, the future endings still remain the same. It is important to memorise a few key irregular verb stems, such as aller, faire, avoir and être, because it is very likely that you will have to use them in the writing part of your exam.