Jul 10, 2017 - 05:22 AM
Hi Joseph, both the passé composé (taught in level 2) and the imperfect (taught in level 5) are past tenses, but they don't exactly correspond to the English past tenses, which is why we chose to start introducing them little by little. We started with the passé composé, since it's the easiest to grasp at first, and the most useful one to tell people what you've done and tell stories in the past. And then we introduce the imperfect in level 5 where we explain how and why using one tense or the other more in detail.
Now, the issue here is that the verb to be -"être"- is a bit special (as always) and it's mostly used in the imperfect tense (était), so even though people would understand you if you say "Mon travail a été intéressant", it's more natural to say "Mon travail était intéressant". The reason is, mostly because the passé composé is the tense of past actions, so it doesn't work that well with "être" except in very specific contexts.
In the software, we've decided not to work a lot on "Être" until we teach the imperfect tense, since it's quite complex, so, for now, my advice would be to focus on learning how to form the passé composé well, and how to use it with all other verbs, so that when you get to learn the imperfect in level 5, you'll be able to focus on the different uses of each tense for all verbs. Patience, you're on the right track!!