As far as past tense goes, likely what your teacher will want is Passé composé. With that, you have to use a form of the verb avoir (to have) or être (to be), depending on the verb. The most common is avoir, there are a set which take être, but we'll get to that later.
Avoir (to have) is conjugated like so:
J'
ai
Tu
as
Il/Elle/On
a
Nous
avons
Vous
avez
Ils/Elles
ont
Sticking with parler, to put it in the past tense, you have to first find out who is talking. Let's say it's one woman talking, so it would take Elle. The first part of the passé compose is to conjugate avoir (or être), as required. To do this, just follow (and memorize) the guide above.
We'd start off with "Elle a", and would add what's called the past participle to it. To form this, you take your verb (parler for example), and remove the ER. You're left with parle, but in the case of regular ER verbs, you have to add and accent aigu (é) to the e.
After forming the past participle and adding it in to the subject and avoir, you have
Elle a parlé meaning "she has talked (spoken)"
For IR and RE verbs, follow the same pattern, remove the IR or RE, and add the ending. IR verbs lose the IR and add an i. RE verbs lose the RE and add a u.
Past Participles
ER (eg. parler) --> Parl
é ----> J'ai parlé (I have talked)
IR (eg. finir (to finish)) --> Fin
i ----> Il a fini (he has finished)
RE (eg. perdre (to lose)) --> Perd
u ---->Elle a perdu (she has lost)
There are a set of verbs which take être instead of avoir. These verbs work the same way, but with être instead.
Être (To be)
Je
suis
Tu
es
Il/Elle/On
est
Nous
Sommes
Vous
Êtes
Ils/Elles
Sont
...A few examples
(Mourir- To die) --->
Il est mort (he has died)
(Venir- To come)--->
Elle est venue (she came) * Notice the bolded e, that's because with être, the verb must agree with the subject, in this case a singular female, so you add an e.
Aller- To go----> Elles sont allé
es (The girls ran) *Here, an e must be added because they are female, as well as an s because it's plural.
For nous, either an s (all males or females + males) or an es (females only)
Vous works the same way, Ils requires an s (plural), Elles an es (female plural). Je requires an e if you are a female, Il doesn't need anything added, Elle needs an e, Tu needs an e if it's a female, nothing if it's a male, and On needs no extra ending.
The fine folks at Wikipedia have a good article on Passé Composé, here's the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passé_composé
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. I'm going to do German now as I understand it far better...
