u/Honest-Ingenuity-603

Hi friends,

Going to share what I can remember for those prepping now and my personal test prep info at bottom, but for those preparing now:

• Location: I used the Alliance Francaise (San Francisco). Yes the price for the test is ridiculous but there is something to be said for managing anxiety by taking the test on your own "turf" with test givers who manage multiple second-language learners while IN a non-FR speaking country. If you are more fluent then guidance from others to take the test in France sounds smarter. My location put us in groups for each portion of the test and swaps which group does the spoken/presentation portion. The entire test day (both groups) began at 11 am and then the first group left at 1 pm and the second group finished at 3 pm. The test groups were small - 6 in group 1, and 5 in group 2. You must use a legal document (Passport) for identification, as when you register for this test the French government asks for your Passport #, so be mindful to pre-pack that the night before and to keep good track of it on test day.
• Registration: They asked me to provide a passport photo (which is weird bc my passport photo is from way back and I no longer have copies so I had to go get a new one; but people can register for these tests months out and of course look totally different day of). They ask for your Passport # and details you'd put on a visa so be sure you're working with a legit testing facility / secure portal. (Birth date, address, Passport number, etc.) 1 week before the test I got a reminder and request to RSVP to finish registering (a bit odd), and after I confirmed, I got no further confirmation from the facility, but I did get an invitation to register for the TCF IRN / Government site to receive my results. I assume this will be linked to any future visa / immigration flows.
• Facilities: This is of course specific to my location, but during the computer portion we were asked to place our belongings (bags, etc) in a separate room that was not locked nor monitored and which had lots of foot traffic, so this did add an element of stress for me, given my unmonitored bag had my PASSPORT in it (!).
  • Computers: Tiny very old monitors (14-16") with old computer mini-boxes that kept lagging while taking the test (for example the whole screen would freeze and the mouse would stop working which made my heart explode several times - the proctor came over and reassured me that the test time was also frozen while this happens so that I was not losing time and just said I had to wait until the system woke up again to continue). Something told me the night before to bring my computer glasses and I was VERY glad I did because the monitors being very small make things very stressful when you are navigating the instructions and program that they use in some areas (ie answering the multiple choice).
    • The keyboards were also QWERTY and very old and in some parts highly unresponsive (all of us in the room were effectively stabbing and banging on certain keys repeatedly to get them to show up with the letter we intended), which slowed all of us down significantly on the written portion. And right before we sat down the (French) proctor said "Oh by the way, you can't create a single apostrophe on the keyboard, you'll make a double apostrophe with that key and then need to type backspace to get an apostrophe" and then he shrugged) -- it was one thing after the other! So the reality is you may get a really wonky experience logistically when you get to the test -- if you are easily affected by surprises prepare yourself for these scenarios.
  • Noise: As others have mentioned, noise is an issue. The facility I was in seemed to have a cultural event happening on another floor so there was music blasting through the building down to where we were in the basement, so I had to navigate a significant portion of the test with my brain challenged to concentrate on the test with that in the background. You may want to check in advance if there will be an event with the venue on the day of your test. The proctor may also get up to speak to / engage with other students and our room was pretty small so every noise (typing on keyboards, speaking to the proctor) was LOUD and intensely distracting, so when you take practice tests, you should try to practice with noise in some scenarios if you are very sensitive / have attention issues.
• The test itself:
  • Spoken - Task 1: Introduce yourself. I think there's plenty out there about this but I was trained by my tutor to prepare follow up answers in case the proctor asked any; the proctor was a prior teacher of mine who spent the whole time looking down at his paper and asked me no follow up questions. This task was recorded by his phone, not video. My understanding based on his statements is he will provide an assessment but so will the administrators on the other side so his evaluation alone will not necessarily decide my fate. He did ask me if I had questions; I asked if I could take notes, he said no, so I moved on.
  • Spoken - Task 2: Role Play. My proctor had several sheets of paper with different scenarios and chose "You and your partner are organizing a wedding and you would like my help to assist you with choosing a venue." I got flustered because speaking is my worst skillset especially when nervous, my speaking reduces to A1 sometimes I just forget all my vocab. I fumbled my way through it!
  • Spoken - Task 3: Answer the question: "If you could meet anyone living or dead who would it be, and why?" My tutor had trained that you must answer these questions like a verbal essay, not "free flow" - so restate the question in some way or frame your opening sentence as an echo of their question and make sure you end with some wrapping phrase or statement like "In summary / conclusion." I do think I did this but it was a blur. He asked me two follow up questions for more advanced opinion sharing so it got intense!

There's a 1 hour break for lunch (this is probably going to change based on where you take the test and how many people there are and the timing of your tests) and then my tiny group and I later reconvene to go to the computer room together. I'll note that as I began my test it was very clear that others had been ordered differently; ie, me and others clearly had the listening part first, and then others had the reading or writing first, so the ordering was different for everyone. You could tell because while I and others were intent listening to our headphones, others were banging away on their keyboards, or doing a whole lot of mouse-clicking.

• Computer interaction:
  • When you first sit down DO NOT touch the mouse/interact with what's on screen. Our proctor wasn't clear and I didn't realize we were still waiting for 1 more student to come and that he was going to leave us in the room with the test while he went out and hunted her down and brought her in. We each head assigned seats but on the screen when you first sit down is an attestation with your test number and your name and you're supposed to interact with it after they give you the signal but he was messy about that, and I realized after the program began reading to the instructions to me and no one else that I wasn't supposed to click! Luckily the test had one more "Suivant" button to click before it began so it wasn't bad but the proctor was definitely giving me the evil eye the whole time because he saw that my screen was 1 step past everyone else.
  • As you initially go through the steps the proctor will return to you and have you sign / attest for that portion of the test on their mobile phone. I vaguely recall him returning to me to do it again later so I believe this happens for each section, or at least the initial oral comprehension and the writing portion (I wasn't clear what exactly I was signing for as the screen on his phone was already set to the signature field)
  • Each section of the test begins with a very ancient and cheesy video walk through on how to read/engage/use the screen and interact for your test. While the interface is ugly, it works well, and there is a clock on the right of the screen for the actual time along with a count down to how much time you have left for the section of the test you are on. The left side of the screen shows grey / green / red highlights over each test question / section for not done (you didn't look at it yet) / done (you submitted an answer)/ incomplete (you clicked on it but didn't submit an answer). The test does let you go back to look at answers in the SAME section so you can change them. There is a split in directions for the Written portion - their written instructions say DO NOT move out of order for the 3 written tasks, but then later the video instructions say you can click between them. I did complete all 3 tasks in order then went back to edit/refine and review the prior tasks and it didn't break my test / undo anything.
  • The written portion does word count for you (thank God) and also has a mini menu on the screen you can use to enter accents.
• Listening Comprehension - My memory is faulty so I'll do my best to describe. This was 25 total questions with subsections (types of content you listen to). I think the sections were 5 and 10 and 10 each. Regardless, the first handful were very easy, the second section felt slightly harder, but not much different from another in difficulty. The third section began to slowly more difficult and then by the final 17-25 you're feeling a noticeable shift in difficulty. However the formats were different, which is why I think they created these subsections. You also only got to hear the audio ONCE.
  • The first very easy section was just listening to 1 voice make a short statement, literally a sentence, and then you answered the question on the screen (written) and chose your answer from very short straightforward possible answers, and they written such that really only one could possibly be the answer (to have chosen anything else would mean you understood 0 French because those answers would have been ridiculous). So this was of course very easy, you can read what's on the screen for the question, and the oral demand of you is less.
  • The second section began to ask you the answers (memory fuzzy) vs to place the question in writing. The audio moved from a single speaker to a dialogue, and the dialogues are 4-7 sentences and around 3-4 concepts or thoughts being exchanged by the speakers.
  • The beginning of the third section has the conversations go on for much longer, and introduce 5-10 concepts, and by the time you get to the end, they're using advanced vocabulary/phrasing, and speakers are expressing multiple ideas/concepts and you have to find the nuance in highlighting the MAIN thing they're talking about vs "one" of the things they were talking about. At this point the multiple choice is deliberately trying to trick you; if you've done mock tests you should be familiar with this method.
• Reading Comprehension - This picked up counting from your prior answers so the final count by the time you finish this section is "50 answers submitted" but this is inclusive of your prior listening answers. The cool thing is the program allows you to zoom in and out and scroll up and down through the text, and even to pop out the text if you need to. The documents were everything from notices a person posted for their neighbors for a party, a job posting for part time work (hiring), a posting for part time work (tutoring), newspaper articles, announcements for events, postings on the fronts of businesses regarding exceptions regarding their hours etc -- all things you should have encountered in mock tests. They of course get progressively advanced with language and detail as you make your way through. Ones that particularly tripped me up toward the end that I kept lingering on were an Op Ed in a newspaper about renovating older buildings and language on architecture and culture, and another academic type of excerpt regarding city services - again all the types of things you'll encounter in mock tests. The pressure is on to have higher vocab as they use complex phrasing and big word synonyms and discuss more advanced topics.
• Writing: I can't remember all the topics but the ones I do ...
  • 1. Read the email from your friend Sylvie and reply. (Describe the buildings, the neighborhood, the stores, the public transit.) Sylvie's email was, to paraphrase: "Have you checked out the neighborhood yet? How is it?"
  • 2. Don't remember! But I do recall thinking that it was very similar to task 1. A male friend wrote you, and asked for your opinion -- I think he asked about either my job or whether I made a decision on something and you're supposed to update him on it and why.
  • 3. Do you prefer taking your meals at restaurants or preparing them yourself? Why or why not? Explain.
  • An interesting note: in mock tests I kept seeing a progression in word count between 1 and 3. Where Task 1 is a minimum of 40 words, then Task 2 is a minimum of 90 and Task 3 could be minimum of 90 also, or Task 2 = 60 min and Task 3 is 90 min. For this test ALL three had a minimum of 40 words, which I HUGELY appreciated and which delighted and suprised me. Not sure if this is a change from prior versions.

When done: I got a rating on the screen of both the comprehension (listening and reading) portions for B2 / B2, I believe out of 499 (fuzzy memory). I didn't expect / know that was going to happen that was really cool to walk away with a sense of how I did at least on that portion.

But, I know the final rating adds all the work for the day together, so I'll wait anxiously for the results! The proctor made a point multiple times to say we'd get results in 10 days (vs 2 weeks) so, that was a nice surprise!

I'll post back what I got ... but hopefully this helps folks prepare for the experience day of!

STUDYING

I think everybody's posted really helpful guidance and there are lots of great resources out there on YouTube and elsewhere for free or paid. I'm not going to be of much use here but sharing anyway - I began taking French at age 6 and didn't stop until Year 2 in college. I took it because I loved it and was probably C2 when I stopped. I was accepted to university in France but chose to go to a US college. Then I had a long gap of course of not practicing etc, so my goal was to immerse myself heavily and dust off cobwebs but I knew I was probably beginning from A2 to start.

I used over 3 months:

1. Per week - 5 hours of French (active - classes, tutoring, conversation), with additional 2 hours of homework. The core classes were retroactive - me relearning the basics to keep me immersed and wake up my historical memories and refresh gaps. For example there were lots of words I remembered but others I didn't, and rules I'd forgotten and others I remembered. The tutoring and conversation were to force me to challenge beyond my current ability, to stretch myself and target B1 on the test.
2. Per week - where possible, 2-3 more hours of French content (TV shows, movies), progressing to watching French with French subtitles, and closer to the test NO subtitles (note that I did this even though I couldn't understand everything to force my brain to understand different speaking styles in French and where the words stop and start).
3. Last month before test: DELF Didier workbooks, grammar and conjugation drill books (the brain works best when you write things over and over while saying them because it links the body and the two sides of the brain that handle/process language), and mock tests given by my tutor but also on my own using free resources. I also signed up for one of the popular YT language teacher courses but after a certain point you can overflow a cup and not learn anything else so I am saving her course to try in a week or two when I start prepping to do the DELF B2.

One thing in the final weeks I was also reading about: it's important to take breaks. Your brain coalesces learning and connections in the background passively, so at a certain point you have to get out and do other things and live life, especially when mentally tired. I knew it was a tall order to push such a jump in 3 months but I'm on a timeline so I made the time for it -- normally in life what I'm doing wouldn't be feasible but I'm determined. I'm trying to get a longer term visa so, for me, the immersion at this scale was necessary and worth it.