À l'école (At school)
Primary 5 · French
À l'école (At school)
Lesson 3 of 3
15 min
Let's begin
Think about what actually happens in your classroom in one morning. You sing. You listen. You look at the board. You work in your exercise book. You play at break.
In French: chanter, écouter, regarder, travailler, jouer. Look at the ends of those five words. Every single one ends in -er.
That is not a coincidence — it is the biggest gift French gives a beginner. Learn one -er verb properly and you can use hundreds of them.
The name of a verb — the form you would find in a dictionary — is called the infinitive. In French, most verbs have an infinitive that ends in -er:
You cannot say “I to speak”. The verb has to change its ending so that it matches the person doing the action. Changing those endings is called conjugating — and for -er verbs there is one recipe that never lets you down.
Take chanter (to sing). Uwase wants to say “I sing”.
Step 1 Write the infinitive: chanter.
Step 2 Cut off the -er. What is left is the stem: chant-. The stem never changes again. It is the safe part.
Step 3 Find the ending that belongs to je. It is -e.
Step 4 Glue them: chant + e = chante.
Je chante. — I sing.
Now keep the same stem and just swap the ending for each person:
| Person | Ending | chanter | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| je | -e | je chante | I sing |
| tu | -es | tu chantes | you sing (one friend) |
| il / elle / on | -e | il chante | he / she sings |
| nous | -ons | nous chantons | we sing |
| vous | -ez | vous chantez | you sing (several people, or politely to one adult) |
| ils / elles | -ent | ils chantent | they sing |
Six endings, in this order: -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent. Say them out loud five times. They are the same for every regular -er verb in the language.
travailler (to work). Cut the -er → stem travaill-. Add the six endings:
je travaille · tu travailles · il travaille · nous travaillons · vous travaillez · ils travaillent
Now cover the page and build parler yourself before you read on.
Ready? Stem is parl-, so: je parle · tu parles · il parle · nous parlons · vous parlez · ils parlent. If you got those six, you can do this with any -er verb you meet for the rest of your life.
Say these three out loud: je chante, tu chantes, ils chantent.
They sound exactly the same — “shont”. The endings -e, -es and -ent are all completely silent. That -ent especially: you do not say “shont-ent”. You say “shont”.
Only two endings are really heard:
This is why you cannot write French by ear. Look at the person word first — je, tu, il, nous, vous, ils — and let it choose the ending for you. The person word is the boss.
écouter begins with é. You cannot write « je écoute » — two vowels crashing into each other. So je drops its e and takes an apostrophe:
J'écoute le professeur. — I listen to the teacher.
Same for j'aime, j'habite, j'étudie. Only je does this — everyone else stays normal: tu écoutes, il écoute, nous écoutons, vous écoutez, ils écoutent.
Look at line 3 and line 6 again. The person word is not there — it is a name, or a group. So ask yourself the question that solves every one of these: “Could I replace this with il, elle, ils or elles?”
Keza → she → elle → ending -e → Keza dessine.
Les élèves → they → ils → ending -ent → les élèves jouent.
Mugisha et Gatete → they → ils → Mugisha et Gatete chantent.
Tip
Three steps. Every verb. Every time
1. Find the infinitive — jouer.
2. Cut the -er — jou-.
3. Add the ending that belongs to the person — nous → -ons → nous jouons.
And learn the six endings as a little song, in order, the way you learned your times tables:
e … es … e … ons … ez … ent.
Once that song is in your head, you never have to think about it again.
For each one, do the three steps out loud before you tap Show answer: infinitive → cut the -er → add the ending.
étudier, for tu.
Answer: tu étudies. Stem étudi-, and tu always takes -es.
regarder, for nous.
Answer: nous regardons. Stem regard- + -ons. This is one of the two endings you can actually hear.
Complete: « Les élèves ___ (écouter) le professeur. »
Answer: Les élèves écoutent le professeur. Les élèves = ils, so the ending is -ent — silent, but it must be written.
Complete: « Je ___ (aimer) le sport. »
Answer: J'aime le sport. aimer starts with a vowel, so je becomes j'.
Mugisha wrote: « Nous jouez au football. » Fix it.
Answer: Nous jouons au football. He borrowed the vous ending. Nous takes -ons.
Say in French: “We work and we sing.”
Answer: Nous travaillons et nous chantons. Two verbs, one person, the same ending on both.
What you learned today
Quick check
Match each person to its -er ending.
Tap one on the left, then its partner on the right.
