The document outlines an objective to understand the past tense in French. It lists three outcomes: being able to recognize past tense verbs, read and understand paragraphs in the past tense, and potentially write paragraphs in the past tense. Examples of common French verbs in the past tense are provided like "manger" (to eat), "vendre" (to sell), and "finir" (to finish). Various conjugations of these verbs in the past tense are shown for "I", "you", "he/she", "we", and "they".