Looking up a French verb conjugation should take seconds. Whether you are checking an irregular passé composé form mid-draft or working through a full tense table for study, the way you interact with a conjugation reference determines how much you actually learn from each lookup — and how quickly the forms become automatic.
The Five Tenses to Prioritise First
French has more than fifteen tenses and moods, but exam writing at B1–C1 level draws predominantly from five. Build mastery here before working on the rest.
For DELF B2 and DALF C1, add the subjonctif présent to this list. Once you are confident in these six, other tenses are refinements rather than foundations.
What to Notice When You Look Up a Verb
Most learners look up one form and move on. Each lookup is more valuable if you notice three things before closing the reference:
How to Turn Each Lookup Into a Memory Opportunity
After looking up a verb form, write one sentence using it before you continue. Do not just note the form — produce it in context. This takes ten seconds and is significantly more effective at building recall than passive reading of tables.
For irregular verb stems, group them by family as you encounter them. Verbs that share a pattern can be learned together:
Noticing these families turns each lookup into pattern recognition rather than isolated memorisation.
During a Timed Practice Session: Look Up or Write Around?
Looking up every uncertain form during a timed session breaks concentration and simulates the wrong exam conditions. Use a two-level rule:
Reserve full tense-table study for before and after practice sessions. The goal during a session is to write; the goal in a study session is to learn.
When to Build Your Own Conjugation Reference
As you practise writing, keep a running list of the irregular verbs you look up more than once. After three or four weeks of timed practice, this list becomes your personal priority study sheet — the specific gaps in your conjugation knowledge, not a generic list from a textbook. Reviewing it for ten minutes before your exam is significantly more targeted than revising a full verb table you already know.
A Conjugation Tool That Covers Every Verb and Every Tense
Use the French Verb Conjugator to look up any French verb across all tenses and moods in seconds. Type the infinitive, select the tense, and get the complete conjugation table — including which auxiliary the verb takes for compound tenses and the pattern family it belongs to.
For verbs you look up repeatedly, focus on internalising the stem rather than the individual forms. Once you know that voul- is the conditionnel stem of vouloir, all six conditional forms follow from the standard endings without further memorisation.
