French 1 Quiz: Stem Changing Verbs
10 questions · exam conditions
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Stem Changing VerbsQuestion 1 of 10

Lucie écrit un e-mail à sa correspondante : « Mon frère et moi, nous   souvent nos amis pour des soirées. Ma sœur, elle,   surtout ses collègues. »

Which option correctly fills BOTH blanks in order, using appeler ?

appelons / appèle — nous stays unchanged outside the boot; elle takes accent grave instead of doubling
appellons / appelle — nous is inside the boot and doubles; elle also doubles as a singular form
appelons / appelle — nous is outside the boot (no doubling); elle is inside the boot (doubled l)
appèlons / appèle — both forms take accent grave because appeler follows the same rule as acheter
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French 1 Quiz

French 1 Quiz: Stem Changing Verbs

Practice Stem Changing Verbs in French 1 with focused quiz questions that help you check what you know, review explanations, and build confidence with test-style prompts.

What this quiz covers

This quiz focuses on Stem Changing Verbs, giving you a quick way to practice the rules, question types, and explanations that matter most for French 1.

How to use this quiz

Try each quiz question before looking at the correct answer. Use the explanations to review missed ideas, then come back to similar questions until the pattern feels familiar.

All questions

Question 1

Lucie écrit un e-mail à sa correspondante : « Mon frère et moi, nous   souvent nos amis pour des soirées. Ma sœur, elle,   surtout ses collègues. »

Which option correctly fills BOTH blanks in order, using appeler ?

  1. appelons / appèle — nous stays unchanged outside the boot; elle takes accent grave instead of doubling
  2. appellons / appelle — nous is inside the boot and doubles; elle also doubles as a singular form
  3. appelons / appelle — nous is outside the boot (no doubling); elle is inside the boot (doubled l) (correct answer)
  4. appèlons / appèle — both forms take accent grave because appeler follows the same rule as acheter
Explanation: When conjugating appeler, the key concept to master is the "boot" (or "shoe") pattern — a visual tool showing which subject pronouns trigger a spelling change. Inside the boot (je, tu, il/elle/on, ils/elles), the l doubles to ll. Outside the boot (nous and vous), the stem stays unchanged, so no doubling occurs. For this sentence, nous is outside the boot, giving you appelons — one l, no accent. Elle is inside the boot, giving you appelle — doubled ll. That makes C the correct answer, and it's the only option that applies the boot pattern accurately to both subjects. Option A trips you up by confusing appeler with verbs like acheter or peser, which use an accent grave (è) instead of doubling. Appeler never uses accent grave — it always doubles the l inside the boot. Giving elle the form appèle is simply the wrong verb category. Option B makes the opposite mistake: it doubles the l in appellons, placing nous inside the boot when it definitively sits outside it. Nous appellons is not a real conjugation. Option D applies accent-grave logic to both forms, as if appeler behaved like acheter throughout the entire paradigm. It doesn't — appeler is a doubling verb, not an accent-shifting one. A handy study tip: when you see an infinitive ending in -eler or -eter, check whether it doubles the consonant or adds an accent grave — these two groups are commonly confused, and exam questions frequently exploit that gap.

Question 2

Thomas et sa mère font les courses. Thomas dit : « Maman, est-ce que tu   le cadeau d'anniversaire pour grand-père aujourd'hui ? »

Which option correctly fills the blank, using acheter conjugated for tu in a question?

  1. achètes — tu is a boot form so the stem vowel changes to è, and the -es ending is kept in question word order (correct answer)
  2. achète — tu takes the same stem-changed form as il/elle, dropping the -s ending in questions
  3. achetons — the question context shifts the verb to a nous-style form to include both speakers
  4. achetez — questions with tu require the polite vous form to show respect toward the parent
Explanation: When conjugating acheter (to buy) in French, you're dealing with two separate but related concepts: stem-changing verbs and basic conjugation rules. Acheter is a "boot verb" — inside the conjugation table, certain forms change the stem vowel from e to è to reflect pronunciation. The forms that take this change are je, tu, il/elle, and ils/elles (forming a "boot" shape), while nous and vous keep the original stem. For tu, the correct conjugation is achètes — the stem changes to achèt-, and you add the standard -es ending that tu always takes with regular -er verbs. In the question structure est-ce que tu achètes..., the word order stays subject-verb, so nothing about the ending changes. This makes A correct. B is wrong because it uses achète without the -s, which is the il/elle form — tu never drops the -s in questions. That's a common mix-up but not grammatically valid here. C is wrong because achetons is the nous conjugation; just because two people are present in the scene doesn't mean you switch to nous for a verb directed at tu. The pronoun in the sentence is clearly tu, so the verb must match it. D is wrong because questions addressed to tu do not require vous — vous is a separate pronoun with its own conjugation (achetez), and substituting it here would change the meaning entirely, not just add politeness. Your study tip: always identify the subject pronoun first, then apply the correct stem (boot or regular) and the standard ending for that pronoun. Don't let context clues like question format or scene participants distract you from matching verb to subject.

Question 3

Marie parle à sa sœur : « Je veux acheter une nouvelle robe pour la fête. Est-ce que tu   aussi quelque chose ? »

Which form of acheter correctly completes the blank in the passage above, where Marie's sister is being addressed as tu ?

  1. achètes — because tu takes the stem achèt- with an accent grave and the regular -es ending (correct answer)
  2. achetez — because tu is a polite form that follows the same pattern as vous in formal speech
  3. achetes — because the stem stays unchanged for tu and only the ending -es is added
  4. achettes — because the final consonant of the stem doubles before the -es ending, similar to appeler
Explanation: When conjugating acheter (to buy) in French, you need to recognize it as a stem-changing verb. Unlike regular -er verbs, acheter undergoes a spelling change in certain forms to preserve the correct pronunciation: an accent grave (è) appears over the e in the stem whenever the ending is silent. For the tu form, the ending is -es (silent), so the stem changes from achet- to achèt-, giving you achètes. This accent grave signals that the e is pronounced openly, like the e in "fête." So Marie's question becomes: « Est-ce que tu achètes aussi quelque chose ? » — making A the correct answer. Looking at the distractors: B is wrong because tu and vous are entirely separate pronouns with different conjugations — tu is the familiar singular form, never interchangeable with the polite vous form. Choosing achetez (the vous form) here would be a grammatical error regardless of register. C is wrong because it removes the accent grave, writing achetes as if it were a perfectly regular verb. Without the accent, the pronunciation would be incorrect, and French spelling rules require the accent to reflect the open vowel sound. D is wrong because doubling the final consonant (achettes) is the pattern for verbs like appeler → appelle, but acheter follows the accent-grave strategy instead — these are two distinct categories of stem-changing verbs, and mixing them up is a very common mistake. As a study tip, memorize these two groups separately: verbs like appeler and jeter double the consonant, while verbs like acheter and lever add an accent grave. Knowing which group a verb belongs to will save you on exam questions like this one.

Question 4

A student writes: « Mes amis appellent souvent leurs parents le dimanche. » Her classmate argues that the correct form should be appelent because the verb follows the same accent-grave rule as acheter. Who is correct, and why?

  1. The student is correct — appeler doubles the l rather than adding an accent grave for third-person plural, giving appellent (correct answer)
  2. The classmate is correct — appeler and acheter both use an accent grave for all boot forms, so appelent is right
  3. Neither is correct — the third-person plural of appeler is appèlent, with an accent grave and only one l
  4. The student is correct — appeler is irregular and appellent must be memorized as a special exception with no pattern
Explanation: When you see a question about French stem-changing verbs, the first thing to ask yourself is: which spelling pattern does this verb follow? Not all verbs that change in the "boot" (the forms where the stem is stressed — all singular forms plus third-person plural) change the same way. Two common patterns exist: verbs like acheter add an accent grave (è) to the stem vowel, giving forms like il achète and ils achètent. Verbs like appeler, however, solve the pronunciation problem differently — they double the final consonant of the stem instead. This gives il appelle and ils appellent, where the doubled l creates the same "open e" sound without any accent. Both strategies produce the correct [ɛ] vowel sound, but the spelling rule depends entirely on which verb you're using. So the original student writing appellent is absolutely correct — answer A is right. Answer B is wrong because it incorrectly lumps appeler and acheter into the same category. They are both boot verbs, but they follow different spelling conventions. Applying acheter's accent-grave rule to appeler produces a nonstandard form. Answer C attempts a compromise — accent grave plus single consonant — but this form (appèlent) does not exist in standard French. You cannot mix the two patterns. Answer D is misleading because appellent does follow a recognizable pattern (consonant doubling); it is not a random exception requiring pure memorization. Your study tip: memorize appeler and jeter as the doubling group, and acheter, lever, and peser as the accent-grave group — they sound alike but spell differently.

Question 5

Which pair of conjugated forms is BOTH correct for the verb appeler ?

  1. j'appèle and nous appèlons — accent grave appears throughout the conjugation for consistency
  2. j'appèle and nous appelons — boot form takes accent grave; nous is outside the boot so no change
  3. j'appelle and nous appellons — the l doubles in all forms because the verb root always ends in ll
  4. j'appelle and nous appelons — boot form doubles the l; nous is outside the boot so no doubling (correct answer)
Explanation: Whenever you see a question about appeler and similar verbs, you need to think about the boot (shoe) pattern — a concept that explains why certain verb forms change spelling while others don't. The "boot" is an imaginary outline drawn around the conjugation table that includes all singular forms (je, tu, il/elle) and the third-person plural (ils/elles), but excludes nous and vous. For appeler, the spelling change is consonant doubling: the final l of the stem doubles to ll whenever the ending that follows is silent (inside the boot). This is what you hear — the doubled l forces the preceding vowel to be pronounced more openly. So j'appelle, tu appelles, il appelle, and ils appellent all double the l. But nous appelons and vous appelez sit outside the boot, their endings are fully pronounced, so no doubling occurs. That makes D the correct pair. Choice A is wrong on two counts: the accent grave form (j'appèle) is not the standard spelling for appeler (doubling, not an accent, is the mechanism), and applying any change to nous misunderstands the boot rule entirely. Choice B gets the nous form right but uses the wrong spelling change — accent grave belongs to verbs like acheter, not appeler. Choice C doubles the l correctly in j'appelle but then incorrectly extends that doubling to nous appellons, forgetting that nous is always outside the boot. Your study tip: memorize that appeler uses doubling while acheter uses an accent grave — students constantly mix these two up, and exams love to test exactly that distinction.

Question 6

A student wants to say « I am buying a gift » in French and writes « J'achet un cadeau. » Identify the error and select the corrected sentence.

  1. Je achète un cadeau — the accent grave is correct, but elision of je before a vowel sound is optional in standard French.
  2. J'achettes un cadeau — the final t of the stem doubles before the je ending, as in consonant-doubling verbs like appeler.
  3. J'achète un cadeau — the stem requires an accent grave for the je boot form, and the -e ending was missing. (correct answer)
  4. J'achetons un cadeau — the je form borrows the nous ending when an accent grave would otherwise appear on the stem.
Explanation: When conjugating French -er verbs like acheter, you need to watch for spelling-change verbs — a special group where the stem changes in certain forms to preserve pronunciation. Acheter belongs to the e → è category: in the "boot" forms (je, tu, il/elle, ils/elles), the unstressed e in the stem gains an accent grave to signal an open vowel sound. The nous and vous forms keep the original stem unchanged. The original sentence J'achet un cadeau has two problems: the stem is missing its accent grave (achèt-), and the je ending -e was dropped entirely. The correct conjugation is j'achète. Additionally, je must contract to j' before a vowel — achète begins with a vowel sound, so elision is mandatory, not optional. This makes C the correct answer: J'achète un cadeau fixes both the stem spelling and the missing ending. A is wrong on two counts: Je achète incorrectly avoids elision, which is never optional when je precedes a vowel sound — it's a firm rule of French phonology. B invents a false rule by doubling the final t (achettes), confusing acheter with consonant-doubling verbs like appeler (j'appelle). These are distinct verb categories — acheter uses accent grave, not consonant doubling. D is pure fabrication; the je form never borrows the nous ending (-ons) under any circumstance. As a study tip, memorize the "boot" pattern for spelling-change verbs: draw a boot shape around je, tu, il/elle, ils/elles — those forms share the stem change, while nous and vous stay outside the boot unchanged.

Question 7

Un professeur demande à ses étudiants de choisir la bonne réponse : « Mes parents   toujours à la même heure le matin. » (se lever)

Which correctly conjugated form of se lever fills the blank, and which reasoning is accurate?

  1. se levent — ils/elles is a plural form and plurals always stay outside the boot, so no accent is needed
  2. se lèvent — ils/elles (implied by mes parents) is a boot form for se lever, so the stem vowel changes to è (correct answer)
  3. se lève — mes parents is a plural noun but it takes a third-person singular verb form in French
  4. se lèves — mes parents triggers the tu agreement because it is a second-person possessive construction
Explanation: When you see a reflexive verb like se lever in a sentence, two things need to work together: subject-verb agreement and the "boot" spelling pattern. Se lever is a stem-changing verb, meaning the stem vowel e becomes è whenever the ending is silent — and this change follows the shape of a boot on the conjugation chart. Mes parents is a third-person plural subject, equivalent to ils/elles. This means you need the ils/elles form of se lever. Now here's where the boot matters: ils/elles sits inside the boot (it takes a silent ending: -ent), so the stem does change. The correct form is se lèvent — answering with an accent grave on the è and the reflexive pronoun se to match the third-person plural subject. That makes B correct. A is tempting but contains a critical misconception: it claims ils/elles falls outside the boot and therefore needs no accent. In fact, ils/elles is inside the boot precisely because -ent is a silent ending, which triggers the stem change. C makes a grammar error: mes parents is grammatically plural and absolutely requires a plural verb form — se lève is the singular (il/elle) form and cannot agree with a plural subject. D is nonsensical; mes parents uses the possessive mes (first-person possessor), but the subject itself is third-person plural — it has nothing to do with tu agreement. As a study tip, always draw out the boot when reviewing stem-changing verbs: je, tu, il/elle, ils/elles are inside (stem changes); nous and vous are outside (no change).

Question 8

A French teacher tells her class: « Se lever follows the same stem-change pattern as acheter. » Based on that information, which is the correct ils/elles form of se lever ?

  1. Ils se levez — ils/elles borrows the vous ending when the stem carries an accent grave
  2. Ils se levent — the stem stays unchanged for ils/elles because it is a plural and plural forms never change
  3. Ils se lèvons — the accent grave spreads to the ils/elles form but the ending matches nous for agreement
  4. Ils se lèvent — the boot forms take è in the stem, and ils/elles is a boot form (correct answer)
Explanation: When you see a question about stem-changing verbs in French, your first move should be to identify which forms actually change — and that's where the concept of the "boot" (or "shoe") comes in. Draw an imaginary boot around the conjugation chart: it encircles all singular forms (je, tu, il/elle) plus ils/elles, leaving nous and vous outside. Verbs like acheter and se lever only change their stem inside that boot. For se lever, the infinitive stem is lev-. Inside the boot, an accent grave is added to the stressed e, giving you lèv-. Since ils/elles falls inside the boot, it takes the accented stem lèv- plus the standard third-person plural ending -ent, producing ils se lèvent — confirming that D is correct. Choice A is wrong on two counts: -ez is the vous ending, not ils/elles, and stem-change patterns have nothing to do with borrowing endings from other forms. Choice B is tempting because it uses the right ending (-ent), but it drops the accent entirely. The plural/singular distinction doesn't protect a form from stem changes — what matters is whether the form is inside the boot, and ils/elles absolutely is. Choice C invents a rule that doesn't exist; the -ons ending belongs exclusively to nous, and it never migrates to ils/elles regardless of accent placement. Your study tip: memorize the boot shape visually. Paste a blank conjugation grid and literally draw the boot — every verb question about e → è or e → ie changes becomes much easier once you see which six slots it covers.

Question 9

A student creates a conjugation chart for acheter and marks which forms belong inside the 'boot' (la botte). Which description of the boot is correct?

  1. The boot covers all six present-tense forms — the accent grave appears throughout the entire paradigm for consistency.
  2. The boot covers je, tu, il/elle, and ils/elles — these forms change the stem vowel; nous and vous keep the original stem. (correct answer)
  3. The boot covers only je, tu, and il/elle — ils/elles keeps the unchanged stem because it is a plural form.
  4. The boot covers nous and vous — these high-frequency forms take the accent grave, while the singular forms keep the original stem.
Explanation: When you see a question about "boot verbs" (les verbes en botte) in French, you need to recall which subject pronouns fall inside the boot shape and which stay outside it. The boot is a visual tool showing where stem changes occur in present-tense conjugation. For acheter (and similar verbs), the stem vowel changes — gaining an accent grave (è) — in specific forms. The boot captures je, tu, il/elle, and ils/elles: all four of these forms use achète with the accent grave. The two forms left outside the boot, nous and vous, keep the original stem: achetons, achetez. This pattern exists because the stressed syllable shifts depending on the ending, triggering the vowel change only in those four forms. Answer B correctly identifies this. Answer A is wrong because the stem change does not apply to nous and vous — claiming all six forms take the accent grave contradicts the very purpose of the boot model, which highlights an inconsistency across the paradigm, not uniformity. Answer C makes a plausible-sounding but incorrect claim — that ils/elles stays outside the boot because it is plural. Plurality alone does not determine boot membership. Ils/elles is clearly inside the boot (ils achètent uses the accent grave), making C factually wrong. Answer D flips the boot entirely, placing nous and vous inside it. This is the opposite of reality and likely traps students who confuse which forms are "irregular." A useful memory trick: the boot's shape on paper naturally excludes nous and vous — think of them as standing above the boot, untouched by the stem change.

Question 10

Which sentence contains a correctly conjugated stem-changing verb?

  1. Vous achetez du pain chaque matin au marché — vous is outside the boot, so no accent grave is added to the stem. (correct answer)
  2. Ils achetent beaucoup de vêtements en ligne cette saison — ils/elles is a boot form, but no accent grave appears on the stem.
  3. Nous achètons toujours des fleurs pour notre mère le week-end — nous is outside the boot, so the accent grave on the stem is incorrect.
  4. J'achete un livre intéressant à la librairie du centre-ville — je is a boot form, but the required accent grave is missing from the stem.
Explanation: When working with stem-changing verbs like acheter, the key concept to master is the boot (or shoe). Picture an invisible boot drawn around the conjugated forms: je, tu, il/elle/on, ils/elles fall inside the boot and require a stem change, while nous and vous fall outside and keep the infinitive stem unchanged. For acheter, the stem change adds an accent grave — turning acheter into achète — but only for those inside-the-boot forms. Choice A is the correct answer. Vous sits outside the boot, so acheter keeps its original stem: vous achetez. No accent grave, no problem — the conjugation is perfectly standard. Choice B shows ils achetent, which looks like it might be right because ils is indeed a boot form. But that's exactly why it's wrong: ils requires the accent grave, making the correct form ils achètent. The missing accent is the error here. Choice C writes nous achètons, but nous is an outside-the-boot form — it should never carry the accent grave. The correct form is simply nous achetons. Adding the accent where it doesn't belong is a common overextension mistake. Choice D presents j'achete, and while je is correctly identified as a boot form that needs the change, the accent grave is simply absent. The form must be j'achète to be correct. A handy study tip: draw the boot around je, tu, il/elle/on, ils/elles and remember — accent inside, no accent outside. If a form is inside the boot, the accent grave is non-negotiable.