Free Passato Prossimo Quiz

How the passato prossimo quiz works

You make two choices before you start, and the first is one of three modes:

• Avere or essere? One verb and a subject at a time, with two buttons.
• Write the passato prossimo. The same question, but you type the form, such as è andata.
• Agreement. A short everyday sentence with a gap where the past participle goes, such as Le ragazze sono ___ alle otto.

The second choice is what to practice. In the first two modes that means one or more verb sets, such as the verbs that take essere (andare, partire) or the irregular participles (fatto, detto). In Agreement you pick kinds of sentence instead, such as sentences with essere (sono partite) or with avere (le ho trovate). Nothing is preselected, and if you press Start too early, it outlines in red what's still to pick and says what's missing. A running score stays on screen while you work, with your right answers, your wrong ones and the percent.

Avere or essere? One verb at a time

In this mode the quiz shows a subject and a verb with its meaning, such as lei · partire (to leave). Press avere or essere, or keys 1 and 2. The quiz then shows the whole form, lei è partita, and a one-line reason, such as these:

• “Partire takes essere, like most verbs of going or coming somewhere, so the participle agrees with the subject.”
• “Every reflexive verb takes essere, and the participle agrees with the subject.”
• “Fare takes avere, like most Italian verbs. Its participle is irregular: fatto.”
• “Camminare takes avere, like most Italian verbs, even though it's about moving.”

The verbs that take both come up once with essere and once with avere, and the words after the verb decide which, as in salire sul treno and salire le scale. For the second, the reason reads “Salire takes avere when it has a direct object, here le scale, and with avere the participle doesn't agree with the subject.”

Write the passato prossimo

This mode asks the same question, and you type the answer. For lei · andare you type è andata. The subject is optional, so lei è andata also counts, and capitals don't matter. With io and tu both endings count, sono andato or sono andata, because the person could be a man or a woman. With noi, voi and loro both count too (siamo andati or siamo andate), while with lui and lei only one does: lui è andato, lei è andata.

When an answer is wrong, the feedback names the problem. If only the accents are off, as in e andata or e' andata with an apostrophe for the accent, it says “Almost: check the accents.” If the auxiliary (the è in è andata) is right but the ending (the -a in andata) is wrong, it says “The auxiliary is right; check the participle's ending.” Use avere and make the participle agree with the subject, as you would with essere, and it says “The auxiliary is right, but with avere the participle doesn't agree with the subject.” The right participle with avere where the verb needs essere gets “This verb takes essere, not avere.”

A reflexive verb typed without its pronoun, such as è alzata for si è alzata, gets “Keep the reflexive pronoun (mi, ti, si, ci, vi) before essere.” Where a verb has two participles, both count: ho perso and ho perduto, ho visto and ho veduto. You don't need an Italian keyboard, because buttons type à, è, é, ì, ò and ù.

Past participle agreement practice

The Agreement mode gives you a short everyday sentence with the past participle missing, such as Le ragazze sono ___ alle otto. (partire). The buttons show its four forms, partito, partita, partiti and partite, and keys 1 to 4 pick them. You choose one or more of five kinds of sentence:

• With essere: le ragazze sono partite. This kind includes piacere, costare, durare and succedere, whose subject is the thing: La pizza mi è piaciuta molto.
• Reflexive verbs: Giulia si è alzata. The participle agrees with the subject, and the “each other” verbs work the same way: Marco e Giulia si sono conosciuti all'università. With an object after the verb, the usual agreement is still with the subject (Le ragazze si sono lavate le mani). Agreeing with the object is also correct, if less common, and the quiz takes it.
• With avere: Le chiavi? Le ho trovate sotto il divano. The participle agrees only with lo, la, li or le (l' before a vowel) in front of the verb, as in l'ho vista and le ho comprate. Without one, it keeps its -o ending: Giulia ha comprato le mele al mercato.
• Verbs that take both: è salita sul treno, but ha salito le scale.
• Dovere, potere, volere: è dovuta partire, ha dovuto lavorare. Before a verb that takes essere, these three can take either (Giulia è dovuta partire presto and Giulia ha dovuto partire presto are both right), but before a verb that takes avere, only avere. The sentence prints è or ha for you, so the ending is the question.

The sentences come from 170 hand-written sentence frames, which were checked for natural Italian. Each frame is combined with the subjects that suit it, from lui and Marco to mia sorella, Marco e Giulia and le ragazze, which gives 1,858 sentences in all. A man and a woman together take the masculine plural, with the -i ending: Marco e Giulia sono partiti.

Three cases are left out on purpose, because both answers are correct there, and passato prossimo: essere or avere explains each one. They are agreement with che (la lettera che ho scritto or scritta), with mi, ti, ci and vi (Marco ci ha visto or visti) and with ne (di mele, ne ho mangiate tre).

Five verb sets, one verb at a time

In the first two modes you pick one or more verb sets:

• Essere verbs: 18 verbs, from going and coming (andare, venire, partire, uscire), staying (restare, rimanere, stare) and change (nascere, diventare) to essere itself and riuscire.
• Common avere verbs: 44 verbs with regular participles in -ato, -uto and -ito, such as parlato, venduto and capito. The set includes ballare, camminare, nuotare and viaggiare, which take avere even though they're about moving.
• Irregular participles: 30 avere verbs, such as fatto, detto, preso, messo, visto, letto, scritto, aperto, chiuso and bevuto.
• Reflexive verbs: 32 entries, all used with mi, ti, si, ci or vi. Six mean “each other” (conoscersi, vedersi, telefonarsi, scriversi, salutarsi and abbracciarsi) and come up only with noi, voi and loro. Four have an object after the verb: farsi la doccia, mettersi il cappotto, lavarsi le mani and togliersi le scarpe.
• Verbs that take both: salire, scendere, correre, passare, crescere, cambiare, cominciare and finire, each asked once with essere and once with avere. The words after the verb decide, as in correre a casa (essere) and correre per un'ora (avere).

Each verb you picked comes up once before any verb comes up again, with a fresh subject each time. The Essere verbs set covers all 18 before it repeats one, and the sentence frames in Agreement take turns the same way. Every form comes from the same engine as our Italian verb conjugation tables and Italian verb conjugation worksheets: 600 verbs from Wiktionary, checked against two other sources.

Practice the questions you missed

Press Stop and see my score when you're done. You get your score and every question you missed, each with the right answer and what you gave. Practice my mistakes then runs only those questions again, so the verbs you keep missing get the extra turns. The quiz is free, with no signup and no account.

A quiz on screen, worksheets on paper

The quiz is for practice on screen, one question at a time. For passato prossimo practice on paper, the passato prossimo worksheets print the same verb sets and kinds of sentence in five exercises, with an answer key that starts on a new page. To see why each verb takes avere or essere, read passato prossimo: essere or avere. It covers the verbs that take essere, the eight that take both and each kind of agreement the quiz tests, from sono partite to le ho comprate. And if a verb's other forms are the trouble, the Italian verb conjugation tables cover all 600 verbs. If you learn French too, the passé composé is built the same way, from avoir or être plus the past participle, and the passé composé quiz drills it in the same three modes.

Frequently asked questions

Licenses and credits

Conjugation tables come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0). Verbs are ranked by Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords list, built from OpenSubtitles 2018 (CC BY-SA 4.0).