Exercises for Choosing the Right Auxiliary Verb in French

You know the feeling: you want to say “I arrived,” “I went out,” or “I washed up,” and your brain stalls on the tiny word before the past participle. Is it j’ai or je suis? That split-second hesitation is one of the most common reasons French learners freeze in conversation.

Quick answer: most French verbs take avoir in the passé composé, but a smaller group takes être — mainly verbs of movement/change of state and all reflexive verbs. The real skill is not memorising the rule once. It’s producing the right auxiliary under pressure, quickly and consistently.

French corpus data consistently shows that high-frequency past-tense verbs like être, avoir, faire, dire, voir, prendre overwhelmingly use avoir, while several extremely common everyday verbs — aller, venir, arriver, partir — use être. That mix is exactly why this topic matters so much. You can’t just “pick the common one” and hope for the best. In VerbPal, this is why we train auxiliary choice as a production skill: you type and build the form yourself instead of just recognising it on sight.

Start with the rule that actually works

If you want a practical rule, use this one:

• Use avoir for the majority of verbs
• Use être for:
  • common intransitive movement/change-of-state verbs
  • all reflexive verbs

Examples:

• J’ai mangé. (I ate.) 🔊
• Elle a vu le film. (She saw the film.) 🔊
• Je suis arrivé. (I arrived.) 🔊
• Nous sommes partis. (We left.) 🔊
• Elle s’est levée. (She got up.) 🔊

If you need a full breakdown of the movement verbs, our posts on DR MRS VANDERTRAMP: être verbs, why some French verbs use être in the passé composé, and avoir vs être mistakes in the French past tense go deeper. Here, we’re focusing on exercises so you can stop guessing.

Pro Tip: Treat avoir as the default, then train yourself to instantly spot the two big exceptions: movement/change-of-state verbs and reflexive verbs.

Use a decision flowchart before you do any drills

Before you start exercises, you need a fast mental flowchart. Here’s the version we recommend.

That last step matters. Some verbs can take être when they are intransitive but avoir when they take a direct object.

Compare:

If descendre gives you trouble, see Does descendre use avoir or être?. In VerbPal, this is exactly the kind of pattern we isolate with contrast drills, because “movement” versus “direct object” is easier to remember when you have to produce both versions back to back.

Pro Tip: Say the flowchart out loud while practicing: “Reflexive? Movement? Direct object?” That verbal checklist speeds up retrieval.

Exercise 1: Sort verbs into avoir or être

This first drill builds fast classification. Don’t conjugate yet. Just choose the auxiliary.

Group A: choose the auxiliary

1. arriver
2. finir
3. se lever
4. prendre
5. naître
6. parler
7. venir
8. se souvenir
9. voir
10. partir

Group B: watch the trap verbs

Choose the likely auxiliary for the meaning given.

1. “to go back home” — rentrer
2. “to bring in the chairs” — rentrer les chaises
3. “to go down” — descendre
4. “to take down the picture” — descendre le tableau
5. “to pass by” — passer devant le café
6. “to spend three hours” — passer trois heures

Pro Tip: Drill “switch verbs” separately from regular être verbs. They cause a disproportionate number of mistakes.

Exercise 2: Build full passé composé sentences

Now move from recognition to production. This is where most learners discover they “knew” the rule but couldn’t use it.

Prompt set 1

Make each sentence in the passé composé.

1. I arrived late.
2. She ate quickly.
3. We got up at six.
4. They left early.
5. You saw Marie.
6. He was born in Lyon.

Try them before revealing the answers. If you use VerbPal, type the full sentence before checking yourself. That extra production step matters more than people think.

Notice the layers:

• choose the right auxiliary
• conjugate the auxiliary
• form the participle
• add agreement if needed with être

That last point is why learners often write things like J’ai né or forget agreement after reflexive verbs. If that’s your weak spot, read past participle agreement with être and why reflexive verbs always use être.

Prompt set 2: contrast pairs

These are better than random exercises because they force your brain to distinguish meanings.

1. She went out. / She took out her keys.
2. I went up. / I brought up the boxes.
3. He went back. / He brought back the book.
4. We came in. / We brought in the table.

Pro Tip: Always practice auxiliaries in minimal pairs like elle est sortie / elle a sorti. Contrast creates stronger memory than isolated lists.

Exercise 3: Reflexive verbs — the automatic être zone

Reflexive verbs are the easiest category once you trust the pattern: they take être in compound tenses.

Examples:

• Je me suis réveillé tôt. (I woke up early.) 🔊
• Elle s’est couchée tard. (She went to bed late.) 🔊
• Nous nous sommes promenés. (We went for a walk.) 🔊

Drill: convert to the passé composé

1. Je me lave. (I wash up / I wash myself.)
2. Tu te couches tôt. (You go to bed early.)
3. Ils se dépêchent. (They hurry.)
4. Nous nous souvenons. (We remember.)
5. Elle se maquille. (She puts on makeup.)

If you want more reflexive examples built around everyday routines, see French reflexive verbs through your morning routine. In VerbPal, reflexives are worth overtraining because they show up across all tenses, not just the passé composé. We cover irregulars, reflexives, and even the subjunctive, so the pattern keeps reappearing in useful contexts instead of living in one isolated lesson.

Pro Tip: Don’t memorize reflexive verbs as bare infinitives. Memorize them with the pronoun: se lever, se souvenir, se coucher. That makes être feel automatic.

Exercise 4: Timed decision drills for speaking speed

Knowing the rule slowly is not enough. In conversation, you need retrieval in under a second. That’s why we built VerbPal around active production, not passive recognition. In our drills, you’re not just picking from multiple choice. You have to produce the form yourself, which is exactly what speaking demands.

Try this timed drill:

• Set a timer for 60 seconds
• Read the infinitive
• Say the auxiliary + past participle aloud with je
• Move on immediately

60-second list

• aller
• avoir
• se lever
• venir
• finir
• naître
• prendre
• sortir
• se souvenir
• mourir

Possible answers:

• je suis allé(e) (I went)
• j’ai eu (I had)
• je me suis levé(e) (I got up)
• je suis venu(e) (I came)
• j’ai fini (I finished)
• je suis né(e) (I was born)
• j’ai pris (I took)
• je suis sorti(e) (I went out) or context-dependent if transitive
• je me suis souvenu(e) (I remembered)
• je suis mort(e) (I died)

This kind of drill works because it mimics actual retrieval. Research on active recall and spacing consistently shows that effortful retrieval strengthens long-term memory more than rereading or recognition-based review. That’s the logic behind our spaced repetition engine in VerbPal: we use an SM-2 schedule to bring back the verbs you’re about to forget, right when retrieval is most valuable.

Pro Tip: Keep timed drills brutally short. Speed plus repetition beats one long “study session” where you mostly reread.

Exercise 5: Error correction — fix the wrong auxiliary

Error correction is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your instinct. Here are common learner mistakes.

Find and fix the error

1. J’ai arrivé à huit heures.
2. Elle a partie hier.
3. Nous avons nous levés tôt.
4. Il est mangé au restaurant.
5. Tu as né en France ?
6. Ils ont sortis.

One more challenge: choose whether the sentence is correct

Pro Tip: Keep a personal “mistake bank” of the five verbs you get wrong most often. Those verbs should appear in your drills every day until they feel boring.

The best 10-minute drill routine for auxiliary verbs

If you want results, keep the routine short and repeatable.

Minute 1–2: classify

Take 15 infinitives and sort them into:

• avoir
• être
• “depends on meaning/object”

Minute 3–5: produce

Say or write full forms with je, elle, nous:

• arriver
• prendre
• se coucher
• sortir
• venir

Minute 6–8: contrast

Practice pairs:

• elle est rentrée / elle a rentré la voiture (she went back in / she brought the car in)
• je suis passé / j’ai passé deux heures (I passed by / I spent two hours)
• nous sommes descendus / nous avons descendu les valises (we went down / we took the suitcases down)

Minute 9–10: correct errors

Rewrite five wrong sentences from memory.

This routine works especially well inside VerbPal because we handle the scheduling for you. Instead of wondering what to review, you get the right verbs at the right time through SM-2 spaced repetition. That matters even more once you move beyond the passé composé into other areas we cover, including irregular verbs, reflexives, and the subjunctive. Lexi also pops up during sessions with quick reminders when a pattern needs to stick — exactly the kind of high-leverage cue that helps with auxiliary choices.

If your broader goal is fluency, pair this post with Using spaced repetition for French irregular verbs, How to build a 10-minute French verb drill routine, and Moving French verbs from passive study to active speaking.

Pro Tip: End every drill by speaking three original sentences about your real life. Personal sentences stick better than textbook ones.

A compact reference list of high-frequency être verbs

You do not need to memorize every obscure edge case first. Start with the verbs you actually meet all the time.

For full paradigms, use our French conjugation tables or Learn French with VerbPal. If you want to check an individual verb, you can also use pages like Conjugate aller in French or Conjugate venir in French.

Pro Tip: Learn high-frequency être verbs first, then add the “switch verbs,” then reinforce everything with production drills.

FAQ

Is there a simple rule for choosing avoir or être in French?

Yes: use avoir for most verbs, être for reflexive verbs and a core group of movement/change-of-state verbs. Then watch out for verbs that switch depending on whether they take a direct object.

Do all reflexive verbs use être?

Yes. In compound tenses like the passé composé, reflexive verbs take être. Example: Elle s’est levée. (She got up.)

Why do some verbs use both avoir and être?

Because the auxiliary can depend on meaning and transitivity. Sortir uses être in elle est sortie (she went out) but avoir in elle a sorti son téléphone (she took out her phone).

What’s the fastest way to stop making auxiliary mistakes?

Use active recall and spaced repetition. Don’t just reread lists. Produce full forms aloud, practice contrast pairs, and review the same trouble verbs over time. That’s exactly why we built VerbPal drills the way we did.

Should I memorize DR MRS VANDERTRAMP?

It can help as a starter mnemonic, but it’s not enough on its own. You still need practice with reflexives, transitive vs intransitive meanings, and real sentence production.