In French, we have two main different types of past tense. These are passé composé and the imparfait but for today we'll focus on le passé composé. Composé means compound in French, what's a compound? (You should know this from science and maths or English ((compound words)) ). So with this tense, there's two parts, just like a compound is a mix of two or more things.Le passé composé= auxiliary verb + the past participle OR the past tense = the helping word + the doing word.Auxiliary will be avoir or être (go over the conjugations for these if necessary) in present tense. Remember to get the correct part of the verb! (Who or what is doing the action)Past participle is often é added to the end of the stem of the verb. (e.g jouer = joué)