In your word for the day (French) you have given the following example: "Il connaît bien son code de la route mais il a raté son permis de conduire encore une fois." and explained that it means "he knew ..." I am a little confused. Isn't "connaît" conjugation in present tense

 Cécile says: You're right, sorry about that. We've corrected the example.  

However, the origin of the error is quite a useful lesson too:

This example was created from the English, but to write "he knew" we'd have to write "il connaissait" but this would have the sense instead in French that he used to know it (but no longer knows it). So to convey the same sense in French we'd use the present tense instead.  In English, changing the tense doesn't change the meaning of this sentence much, if at all. In French it's very different!

Thanks for the question, it was a very good one!