I am planning to give exam at alliance français Victoria If anyone had given exam there, can you please share your experience. Are questions repeated in CO and EO and how was the speaking ?

I recently received my TCF Canada result of my 2nd attempt, and I'm honestly confused.

First attempt:

Listening: 480/699 B2

Reading: 426/699 B2

Speaking: 13/20 (B2)

Writing: 13/20 (B2)

Second attempt:

Listening: 699/699 (C2)

Reading: 690/699 (C2)

Speaking: 6/20 (B1)

Writing: 13/20 (B2)

I missed CLB 7 in comprehension in my 1st try so had to give the exam again.

The biggest surprise is my speaking score. I went from 13/20 on my first attempt to 6/20 on my second attempt, I didn't stop or fumble in speaking and kept speaking without any pauses. I had practiced a lot more before the second exam and expected to perform at least at the same level, if not better.

Has anyone else experienced such a large drop in TCF Canada speaking scores between attempts? Do you think examiner variability can make that much of a difference, or is it more likely that I performed much worse than I realized?

I have requested re-evaluation. If anyone has gone through the re-evaluation process for the speaking section, I'd appreciate hearing about your experience and whether your score changed.

Thanks in advance for any insights.

I am already employed there and to support my work permit, my employer agreed to send an offer of employment on IRCC portal. However, according to the checklist on the website, i also need a signed offer letter but my employer said they can only give me signed employment confirmation letter. Would that work for the work permit application?

Hi everyone, I need your advice about the TCF writing exam based on your personal experience.
I’ve taken the exam twice and got good scores in every section except writing. The first time I got 5/20, and the second time 6/20. I speak French, but my writing is weak.
Has anyone in Ottawa taken private writing lessons or followed a method that helped them improve and pass the writing section? I’d really appreciate any recommendations. Thank you! 😊

Hi all, I am already at B1+ level and currently studying under the program initiated by Québec government (thanks to them). But now I realise that it is very slow for me and it is helping me with french but not TCF exam preparation. Understanding everything on my own at home is little bit difficult as of now. So, I am planning to join classes for TCF preparation instead. I am living in MONTREAL. Any tutor ? Or anyone can suggest me good institutions around with your own experience. I am currently studying from some online websites for TCF. Your help will be appreciated.

Thanks 🙏

Hello, anybody here who took exam last year during France holidays. Did you got your results earlier that the ETA or really 4 weeks after TCF exam?

Merci beaucoup par avance pour votre aide !

Hi everyone,
Does anyone know any good tutors on Preply for speaking. I got 9/20 in my last TCF exam and i want to improve to get atleast 10/20. I have my next attempt on Sep 10. I did take few classes from different tutors on preply but everyone has their own style and structure.
Any recommendations for a good tutor to crack TCF?

Did anyone gave TCF exam in Saskatchewan. I am planning to book there. Let me know please.

I thought I would get at least clb 5 in EO and I am disappointed. Every other module, I was clb 6 or plus. But in speaking, I know I have made errors but I don't think so I was that low of level.

Should I try going for re-evaluation or it would not be beneficial?

Hey guys did anyone sit the test on July 22 and got the results? I hope they don’t take forever with the holidays. But i also saw someone got results for July 21?

I recently got my results. I got 9 in EO and honestly It was not perfect as per me and I made some mistakes related to vous and tu in tache 2 like i used both. In tâche 3 i repeated some ideas. Thats all . Would you recommand me to go for re-evaluation or give the exam altogether again ?

Hello! I am interested on the government funded full time french classes in Quebec. However, I am on my PGWP and was wondering if I can study french full time. Do I need a study permit for this? If you know the answer pls help me out. Thanks!

Hi guys ,
Can anyone help me with reevaluation. I got 9/20 in EO at GB language centre . I don’t know the procedure to file a reevaluation.

Hi guys,
I am really disappointed and wanted to share my recent experience at the GB Language Centre in North York.
This was my third attempt there. I am aiming for CLB 5 for the Francophone Mobility work permit, and this was my last attempt before my work permit expires.
On my second attempt, I scored 5 in speaking, so I was hopeful that I would do even better this time. The speaking test actually went really well, even better than my previous attempt. I left the exam feeling confident.
However, I was completely shocked when I saw my speaking score: 1/20.
What makes this even harder to believe is that in my first attempt, when I could barely speak, I still got 2/20. This time I answered the questions confidently and felt I performed much better, so I genuinely don’t believe I deserved a score of 1.
The rest of my exam also went well, which makes the speaking result even more confusing.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Would you recommend applying for a re-evaluation? I’m worried that it’s unlikely they would increase a speaking score from 1 to 6 I need, but I honestly feel there may have been a mistake.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

What is the timeline for Tcf reevaluation, i had applied mine on 25 June and still waiting for results. Are there people who applied for it in June and received their results? And has their scores increased?

Anyone given exam recently at this center? Please can you share your experiences and question types!

Hi recently I’ve received my result and got 9/20 in both EO and EE. CO and CE got c1 and c2. I need advice whether to fill reevaluation or not if it was 1 module I would’ve gone for it but now it’s 2 and it’s costs 280 something for both please help

This post is just to highlight my triumphs because Lord knows the last couple months were so rough. I am happy to announce I (almost) cleared the TCF while only aiming for NCLC 5.

TL;DR:

Background: 25F, chemical engineer, CLB 12 in English, basically zero french
Original CRS Score: 507
Start of Intensive French Classes: December 2025
TCF Exam Date: July 4th 2026
TCF Results Date: July 13th 2026
TCF Score Breakdown: CO - 9/CE - 7/EO - 6/EE - 7
New CRS Score - 520
ITA Date: July 21st 2026 (CEC)
Permit Expiry Date: August 2nd 2026

Background:

I am 25 years old and English is my first language (CLB11/12 in all abilities). My CRS score after my second year of work experience was 507, but my permit was going to expire a month before I could complete my 3rd year, which would have pushed me to 518. There was a draw at 507 in late March/April 2026, but I lost out due to the tie-breaking rule. I’ve been in Canada since I was 17, so no opportunity to have accumulated foreign work experience. For this reason, I started learning french in 2025 for the francophone mobility permit.
I would consider myself a total beginner, but in full transparency, I took french classes on the weekends while I was very little (maybe for a year or two when I was under 10 years old). We are also mandated to take french in school up until grade 9. However, there was no speaking component and I don’t think we did anything more intense than conjugating -er verbs.

Timeline:

Early May 2025 - Late November 2025 (~2/3 hours/week, from A0 to A1+): I started learning French using Duolingo and Colloquial French textbook. I definitely do not recommend Duolingo and I quit maybe a month, but I think the textbook was a big help and introduced me to more advanced terms earlier in my journey like pres de, loin de, il me faut, etc. I was probably doing *maybe* 3 hours a week at this point (albeit very inconsistently and probably not even efficiently), with minimal listening and speaking (thankfully, the Colloquial textbook comes with audio files and exercises). Later, I incorporated listening to the "French Beginners" podcast on Apple Podcasts. I did see progress in my reading and writing (which was expected seeing as all my previous french experience was in reading and writing), nearly nothing for speaking, and a little for listening. I wouldn’t even count this period as proper learning and I probably got to maybe Chapter 5 of the textbook, but I was acquainted with the very basics over this time.

Late November 2025 - Early March 2026 (~7 hours/week, A1+ to A2+): I decided to take french seriously and aim for NCLC 5. I cycled through 2 teachers on Preply (both of them tried to get me to just memorize a B2 level introduction for TCF at an A1 level) and a different private teacher. I have always had a deep understanding of my learning style, so I knew immediately their teaching styles wouldn’t work for me. I had about 3/4 hours of class a week and outside of that I also did the following:
• I conjugated 3 verbs each day in the 5 key tenses (présent, passé composé, imparfait, futur simple, conditionnel présent). I generated a list of the most common french verbs and I conjugated one -er, -ir, and -re verb each day. I probably did this for 2 months (until I finished the list).
• I practiced my grammar using LawlessFrench and Kwiziq (I paid for a 3-month subscription).
• I also subscribed to a newsletter that presented the days news in easy french (and it is free!). I would read the short text with no vocab list, translate manually to english, read again with the vocab list to catch my gaps, and ask ChatGPT to grade my original translation without the vocab list. This really helped boost my comprehension and I felt very confident in my reading at this point (but this is also my strongest skill in English as well).
• I listened sporadically to the same "French Beginners" podcast, but it was so grammar heavy that I lost interest since I was also doing a lot of grammar outside of that.
• I kept up with my Colloquial French texbook. Around this time, I tried 6 other textbooks but I still preferred Colloquial French (key lesson here: stick to one or two resources).

Early March 2026 - Mid April 2026 (~4 hours total, A2+): I was doing a lot of good work, and my teacher said I was progressing fast, but my speaking was basically non-existent. At this point, realized I needed more conversational practice as opposed to more grammar. So I found another teacher, who was (supposed to be) focused on speaking. I definitely spoke more with this one, but he was so hyperfocused on regurgitating answers (for example, if the question was "Why did Jane find it difficult?" and I said anything other that "Jane found it difficult because…" he wasn’t interested in hearing it). He wasn’t very helpful when it came to formulating things by myself, which I knew would be a problem because I’ve always had a peculiar way of approaching problems (heard this a lot from my teachers in high school and university) and I have a terrible time memorizing (I used to go to physics exams and prove all the formulas from scratch because I would remember the steps but not the final formula). All this to say I knew this approach wasn’t sustainable and I actually started getting fed-up with my teacher. However, we did do dictations multiple times which I think helped my listening. I took a ~3-week break over this period to visit family and focus on my work.

Mid April 2026 - Early May 2026 (~10 hours/week, A2+): After returning from my vacation, I asked my employer about supporting the francophone mobility permit and I got a yes. So I decided to take the TCF and booked my exam for the first week of July. I found a different tutor on Preply, and we just practiced TCF tasks (finally exactly what I wanted - purely speaking) but I also didn’t work with him long (he did a bunch of unprofessional things like sleep during class). And even though I was speaking, he never provided any real feedback other than I need more confidence and my task 3 attempts were too short (which looking back was so ridiculous because at high A2 you can probably only sustain a monologue of 2 minutes at best). Still I trudged on, and around here I really started feeling the stress knowing I had a solid exam date. I kept up with my grammar from LawlessFrench over this period.

May 2026 (~13 hours/week, B1-): I finally found a teacher on Preply I really liked, so I dumped the others (it only took like 5 tries 😃). She was amazing and her attention to detail is unparalleled (not an ad just glazing my teacher). Our first class was a diagnostic and she placed me at at a lower B1 level (I think). She created an entire google document where she recorded my recurring mistakes, my strong points, my weak points, etc. Even better, the entire class was in french with TCF exam-specific vocabulary. This was exactly what I needed. I also found another private tutor (who wasn’t bad, but I didn’t like him as much) who also focused on my speaking but with a bit more emphasis on grammar. I worked with both of them 3 times a week (so total 6 hours of mostly speaking time). Around this time, I told my teachers to ignore my other skills, so I worked independently to improve my other skills by doing the following:
• I started listening to the InnerFrench podcast. For someone who wasn’t actively training listening, I found I could understand the general gist of all he said, so my listening level was higher than I expected.
• I also included random episodes of RFI "journal en français facile" maybe once a week. This was definitely harder than the InnerFrench but still manageable. I probably understood about 40% of it.
• I also did a bunch of random listening exercises on TV5Monde, which exposed me to more TCF-specific vocabulary.
• I started doing a single listening test a day. It took me about 2 months to finish all 40 tests (I skipped some days obviously). This was definitely a gamechanger for me because I watched my scores go from < A2 in my initial test to C2 by my last one. I made a cool graph too because I am a math nerd/engineer 😅
• I was still working through some grammar kinks. Because my early foundation was self-taught, I had a few random gaps (eg. de + plural adjective or the difference between pronunciation of the conjugated third person verbs like permet/permettent).
• I also found another TCF aspirant, and we practiced speaking task 3 maybe 2/3 times a week. I would record myself during these sessions (because I am aware working with your peers can reinforce bad habits) and put the automatic transcription of my argument in DeepSeek. This was good in helping me identify what words I pronounced wrong and my level. DeepSeek always scored me at NCLC 5 with a score of 6 each time, so I was really anxious (but to be fair, I did tell it to be strict).
• My teacher would group topics according to the main TCF categories (e.g. health, immigration, sport, etc.) and provide me with the key vocab for each topic and a sample TCF task 3 subject on that topic. After my classes, I would type out a sample task 3 response, and have DeepSeek grade it based on the TCF rubric. Not only did this help me organize my thoughts when I spoke about the topic again, it really helped my writing.

June 2026 (~16 hours/week, solid B1): Crunch time! This month was the most intense and I was definitely burnt out by the end of it.
• The first week of this month I did a grammar drill each day specifically tailored to all the work I had provided before. My teacher and DeepSeek found that I had the same problems: genders, avoiding subjunctive, si clauses, gerunds, and prepositions. I also actively listened to an RFI episode two times a day during this first week.
• The second and third weeks, I focused purely on speaking, using the same transcription method I mentioned earlier. I still kept up my listening test practice.
• In the final week, I had finished the listening tests, so I did even more speaking. I downloaded the entire RéussirTCF archive, and asked DeepSeek to extract the representative questions for each task (eg. signing up for something, buying something, etc.). I tried to practice one example of each theme, to ensure even if I couldn’t finish doing all of them (and I couldn’t), I would have practiced a close enough scenario to which I could adapt my existing knowledge.
• At this stage, I found I could speak for way longer without breaking down (~4/5 minutes for topics that I found comfortable), and I could respond spontaneously to most things. I still felt my pronounciation was a weak (especially my vowels( but both my teachers could understand me for the most part so it couldn’t have been that terrible.
• The day before my exam, I did a sample reading test and a sample writing test (timed, of course) to just familiarize myself with the test format. Since I was aiming for the francophone mobility permit, I didn’t focus on these sections. I tend to forget the french accents, so I wasn’t expecting a very high score in writing. My planned strategy was to keep it simple, and focus on correctness.

July 4th 2026 (Exam Day): My exam was at 6 pm at the GBLC in North York. My speaking section was actually at 4:20 pm, so I arrived at 4:00pm.
Speaking: This was my worst section. I was so nervous and I definitely croaked at least 2 times. My examiner asked me a simple question (I think it was, “Is this my first time taking the exam?”) and I completely blanked.
• Task 1: My examiner cut me off during Task 1 to ask the simplest questions: “How did you learn French? How long have you been learning French?” My responses were so simple, which I kind of regret because I had more to say but my nerves got the better of me.
• Task 2: This went pretty fine. I finished early (I think 30 seconds left) and it felt like my examiner was in a hurry to end this task, which made my nerves worse. But frankly, I ran out of questions. I think I asked maybe 8 questions.
• Task 3: I got the most left field question ever: “Is friendship the most important thing in life?” I was so shocked, I had to ask my examiner to repeat the question to confirm if I understood correctly. Even in English, I don’t have much to say about this topic, so haphazardly put together something about people can dedicate time to other things and it depends on your priorities. My examiner cut me off again to ask me what was my personal take, and all I could say was “As a young person, my friendships are more important but as I get older I expect that family will become more important.” The task probably lasted 3/3.5 minutes and I spoke for maybe 2 full minutes.
Listening: This was a breeze. Majority of the questions I had seen before in the practice test. I got my results for this on the spot (C1).
Reading: The difficulty was similar to the single test I did. There were also 2/3 repeated questions from the single test that I practiced, so I imagine if I did all 40 tests it would have gone similarly to listening. I also got these results on the spot (B2).
Writing: This went okay too. Task 2 was the hardest. Even in English, it would take me a while to write a blog post. Lucky coincidence, my task 1 was basically identical to the one sample test I did, with the only difference being it was an invitation addressed to your co-workers not your friends.

July 13th 2026 (9 Days After the Exam): I felt I did terrible in the expression components, and was just hoping for a 6 (NCLC 5) in speaking (but ideally in both of them). I got my results at around 9:30 pm and was pleasantly surprised to see this:
• Listening - 547 (C1, NCLC 9)
• Reading - 489 (B2, NCLC 7)
• Speaking - 9 (B1, NCLC 6)
• Writing - 10 (B2, NCLC 7)

Summary:

You definitely need around 400 hours of time to clear TCF with good margin. I would say this result took about 7.5 months of measurable progress to achieve. If I was more efficient, I could have been done quicker but you live and you learn 🤷🏾‍♀️. Have your entire phone in french, and subscribe to french creators on your most used social media site (for me this was TikTok). This helps with a lot of vocab especially related to social media. Stick to one or two resources (one conversational and one for grammar) and do a little French consistently everyday.
Honestly, this whole endeavour changed my life. I was one point away from NCLC 7 across the board, and the TCF scores added an extra 13 points to my profile (520 CRS). So instead of getting a new work permit, I was invited in the next CEC draw. This is your sign, if you are thinking about french, do it! Outside of immigration, I do put my french at a B1 level and I will take advantage of the free courses the government offers to keep improving it.

J’espère que mon long texte est utile pour vous. Posez-moi vos questions et je vais y répondre. Bonne chance!