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Irregular Conditional Forms: aurais, ferais, irais, serais

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Practise Irregular Conditional Forms: aurais, ferais, irais, serais for GCSE French with this free worksheet and full mark scheme — Higher tier exam-style practice with worked answers for AQA GCSE French (8652). The same four irregular stems are used in the conditional as in the future.

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These worksheets and mark schemes are original, written for Virtus Academy and checked against the current AQA specification. Every worksheet comes with a full mark scheme.

This is a Higher tier only topic, so there's no Foundation paper — only the Higher worksheet and mark scheme below.

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WorksheetHigher · PDFMark SchemeHigher · PDF

Topic overview

The irregular conditional stems are identical to the irregular future stems, which halves the work. This is a Higher-only topic.

Avoir gives aurais, être gives serais, aller gives irais, and faire gives ferais. The stems aur-, ser-, ir- and fer- are exactly those used for the future — only the endings differ.

This is why the two tenses are best learned together. Once you know that aller has the stem ir-, you know both j'irai for I will go and j'irais for I would go. The same applies to viendr-, pourr-, voudr-, devr-, saur- and verr-. Learn each stem once and it serves both tenses.

Revision notes

Shared stems

The conditional uses exactly the same irregular stems as the future.

Aur-, ser-, ir-, fer-, viendr-, pourr-, voudr-, devr-, saur-, verr-. Only the endings distinguish the two tenses.

The four essentials

Avoir: j'aurais. Être: je serais. Aller: j'irais. Faire: je ferais.

These four are the most frequent. Note that je voudrais, already familiar as a polite request, is simply the conditional of vouloir using the stem voudr-.

Learn them once

Knowing a stem gives you both tenses.

Ir- gives j'irai for I will go and j'irais for I would go. This makes the irregular conditional far less work than it first appears, provided the future stems are already secure.

Key points

  • Conditional stems match future stems exactly.
  • Avoir gives aurais.
  • Être gives serais.
  • Aller gives irais.
  • Faire gives ferais.
  • Only the endings differ between the tenses.

Worked examples

Example 1

Give the je form of the conditional of avoir. [2 marks]

Working

j'auraisuse the stem aur- with the conditional ending
The stem is the same as the future, but the ending is -ais rather than -aiexplain the difference

Example 2

Give both the future and conditional je forms of aller. [2 marks]

Working

j'irai for the futuregive the future form
j'irais for the conditionalgive the conditional form

Example 3

Explain why learning the future stems also helps with the conditional. [2 marks]

Working

Both tenses use exactly the same stemsstate the relationship
so learning each stem once serves both tenses, with only the endings differingexplain the benefit

Common mistakes

  • Using different stems for the two tenses.

    They are identical.

  • Confusing j'aurai and j'aurais.

    One letter separates will have from would have.

  • Forgetting je voudrais is a conditional.

    It uses the stem voudr- from vouloir.

  • Applying regular stems to irregular verbs.

    The irregular stems must be memorised.

Exam tips

  • Learn each irregular stem once for both tenses.
  • Distinguish -ai from -ais carefully.
  • Recognise je voudrais as a conditional.
  • Remember this is a Higher-only topic.

Key terms

Irregular stem
A stem shared by the future and conditional.
Aurais
The conditional of avoir.
Serais
The conditional of être.
Irais
The conditional of aller.

Related topics

Written and reviewed against the current AQA specification. Spotted an error? Let us know.