Hey everyone….
A friend of mine recently applied for francophone mobility work permit and today she received a letter that she has to present herself for the interview. If anyone has some experience regarding this, can please let me know… would like to ask some questions.
Thanks
Posting on behalf of my brother. His application for study permit associate of arts at University Canada West was approved in sep 2024 for January term. He is studying full time there ever since and only took one semester break, which is supported by his University and is legally allowed. Now as per the new guidelines which were established on 1st Nov 2024, they changed the eligibility for pgwp. But they’ve also said the applications made before this will still be reviewed by the old rules. My brother visited a lawyer because he will applying for pgwp soon and the lawyer said he is not eligible anymore. Anyone who started their associate of arts after the rules and got their pgwp please comment below. My brother is really stressed thinking that he’s gonna have to do a degree now.
Thanks
Hey everyone,
This is my first time posting something like this on a sub. Mostly I am private person and keep everything to myself but I feel like I can share things either way internet strangers rather than my whole family.
I went to canada on a student visa in 2021 and I lived with my uncle and his family. My aunt doesn’t like that and would constantly taunt me, harass me mentally whenever she can. The situation got so worse that she started hiding food from me.
I told my parents everything and their first response was that everyone goes through this. Okay fair enough, I understand that there are struggles in everybody’s life, but how can you as a parent choose to ignore all this.
We all know Indian parents, they tend to choose their relatives over their children, often thinking ‘log kya kahenge’. After a while I stopped telling them, because what’s the point, right? Yes, they have supported me financially for which I am very grateful for and I can’t repay them but emotionally, it is a different story. I kept saying that I want to move out but they didn’t let me because log kya kahenge. So in 2024 my brother came and then I thought maybe now they would allow me to move, but no. My brother was not able to find a job for 1.5 years and I tried my best to support him financially, taking care of his needs, doing his share of work etc, because “boys shouldn’t do household chores”, only for him to disrespect and not appreciating me. I understand that it was my responsibility as an elder sister to support him, but a little appreciation won’t hurt anyone. Now that I am back in India, my brother has found a job as a security guard (casual position), like he has to pick his own shifts, and he doesn’t do that as well. I keep telling him to please work, money is important, but he won’t listen and my parents also support him. Now I am at that point that I have stopped telling him and letting him do whatever he wants. I think I have fulfilled my responsibilities and there’s nothing more I can do that will make them happy.
Now it is only about me and my happiness. Sorry for the rant, but I needed to let it out.
Hello everyone,
I have seen a lot of posts of people being confused about what exam to choose, switching from one exam to another, so I thought I should make a post on it comparing both so that people might get a little clarity on what exam to choose.
Now both the test have same four modules, i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing. I’ll compare all the modules for both TEF and TCF. So here we go,
Listening: TEF listening has 40 questions and is about 40 minutes long whereas TCF listening has 39 questions and is about 35 minutes long. Now the questions are from level A1 to C2 for both. For TEF, you will be able to read the question first hut for TCF they will narrate the question after the end of the audio clip and they will only play it once. For TEF, I don’t remember the exact question numbers, probably 23-26, these are interview based audios and these are played twice.
TEF listening feels complex than TCF.
Resources for listening:-
TEF: tefcanada.ca, this website has about 20 mocks for listening, but you need to pay $60 for the access, and it is valid for about 2 months
TCF: reussirtcf, formation tcf, fucktcf, free tcf. These platforms have about 40 mocks for listening. First two platforms are paid but the other two are available for free. All these have the exact same content, however, there might be some discrepancies in the answers of free versions and lately I have heard that reussir has added a new question bank.
Reading: Same as listening except you get 60 minutes for it. You can jump between questions. Same resources as listed above.
Writing: TEF writing has 2 tasks whereas TCF writing has 3. You get 60 minutes for both.
TEF: task 1 is the narrative text (fait divers). They will give you a headline and you will have to create a story and continue it. It should take about 20 minutes of your time and about 80-120 words. Task 2 us argumentative essay (essai augmenté). They will give you a controversial statement published in a newspaper or anything and you have to express your opinion. It should take about 40 minutes of your time and about 200 to 250 words.
Speaking: Here comes the part where majority of the candidates struggle with. TEF speaking has two tasks whereas TCF has 3.
TEF: Task A is interaction task, you will see an ad and have to gather information by calling or visiting the site. Some examples are: renting an appartement, job interviews, school courses etc. This is about 5 minutes long.
Task B: the intimidating part, at least for me, here you have to convince your examiner who plays the role of your friend/family etc to do a certain activity with you. The examiner will contradict with any point you present to them for at least the first 9 minutes and in the mast minute they will say well you have convinced me. This task is about 10 minutes long. You will have to give rebuttal for every contradicting statement examiner gives you.
TCF: task 1 is basic (a1-a2 level). You present yourself, your name, age, country of origin, your education, profession and family and then the examiner asks the follow up questions. This is about 2 minutes long.
Task 2 is same as TEF task A, mainly tests b1-b2 level.
They will give you an ad you will ask questions and gather information. Now, this task is about 5:30 minutes long, which includes 2 minutes of prep time.
Task 3: the monologue and the scary part. They will present a topic to you, could be related to education, immigration, social relations or anything and you have to speak about 4:30 minutes, no prep time is given. If you stop before the time runs out, the examiner will ask you follow up questions and make up the time.
This is the format of the both the exams. Personally, I am more biased towards TCF because I was not able to clear TEF even after 3 attempts. The switch from TEF to TCF is not that hard since you are familiar with the language and grammar, it might take some time but it is totally doable.
PROS AND CONS:-
TEF: you can choose specific modules, you do not need to give the full exam, so if anyone is targeting clb 5 for the extension, tef lets you give just speaking and listening modules. High availability and results come faster.
Relatively hard than TCF. Won’t accept revaluation unless there was a technical anomaly during the exam, although it is free
TCF: relatively easier than TEF, but availability is limited. You have to give the whole exam and results take at least 10 days to deliver. Does offer revaluation for a cost, mostly $75-100 for speaking and writing each, in most cases the scores remain unchanged.
This is not a promotion of any platform, just sharing some resources that helped me.
Hope it gives you some clarity, will be happy to answer any questions you might have. Good luck on your journey!!!
Hello everyone,
I am looking to give Celpip exam soon, Can anyone tell me where I can find free material to prepare, if anyone have any pdf or anything that might help, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks
Hello everyone,
I am thinking of applying Francophone mobility work permit and was wondering if anyone has applied and got approved, if they can share their timeline and if they put any supporting documentation of french language other than tef/tcf or college certification. This is an outland application, so I would love some insights.
Thank you
Hello everyone….
I would like to share my journey,mistakes and resources i used during my French journey. So, here we go.
I started learning french in last year feb, at that time I had recently heard about french language draws so I thought I should give it a try. I hired a tutor from day 1 and she helped me with vocab, grammar and everything. Now I had time until October to get clb5 to at least get my work permit extension. So, I thought clb 5, that’s easy, I can reach that in no time but oh boy, was I wrong.
After about 5 months of learning french, we started exam prep for tef. Task A was very easy for me hut task b intimidated me as I am not good at convincing people in my maternal language so you can imagine how horrible I would be in french. Anyways i took one on one sessions with mu tutor and then came the first attempt, I didn’t even get clb5, my scores were <nclc4 for listening and nclc 4 for speaking. So meanwhile I applied for visitor record in order to extend my stay and started prepping for second attempt, which was again, way worse than first one, one reason was that I got very sick during my exam week, this was in jan btw. So as expected I failed again. Honestly it broke me a little so I called my parents and just started crying, they consoled me and said that it is not the end of the world but in that moment it felt like yes it is, so I decided to switch to tcf, started intensive prep for tcf, booked my exam for 3rd march in montreal. I did a lot one on one sessions with my tutor, for listening I practiced on reussir tcf. Reading and writing I didn’t practice a lot because at that time my sole purpose was to get nclc 5 at least. Then came 3rd march, everything went great, listening was mostly repeated from reussir so I was happy about it. Speaking went pretty good but…. Still failed it… so I filed for revaluation, paid for it and sadly there was no change. After a week of me getting the tcf result, I got refusal for my visitor record and was asked to leave within a reasonable time. So I booked my flight and came back. Before coming back, I kept checking dates in India and to my luck, there was one available in bhopal, so I booked it immediately and then I came to India, started intense prep, dedicated at least 4-5 hours a day for my exam. This time I was adamant that I will get clb7 in all modules. For speaking I started preparing topics from last 6 months from reussir website. Asked gemini to give b2/c1 answers along with English translations as well. That helped a lot, I was able to understand what they were talking about and it gave me a lot of content. Did the same with writing.
My tutor used to take my mock everyday for speaking and gave feedback and corrections as needed. She also helped with writing as well.
During my first attempt, I didn’t practice writing at all and got clb6 on the first try, so I was sure that with a little practice clb7 is achievable.
For listening, I did all the mocks on free tcf/fucktcf 3-4 times. Everytime I got 4 or more answers wrong in a mock, I started the entire mock again, until I got c1 in each mock. It helped a lot because most of questions were repeated.
For reading I only practiced 3-4 mocks, so even if the questions were repeated, I wouldn’t know.
Then came 21st may, gave my exam and succeeded finally after 4th attempt.
Resources I used:
Freetcf/fucktcf/reussir/formation for reading and listening. All these platforms have same questions however on fucktcf there are some discrepancies in the answers and the audio quality is not great. Freetcf has an app named tcf with a blue icon and some eiffel tower shaped thing in white.
Speaking and writing: gemini and my tutor.
My tips for everyone on this journey:
Don’t be afraid of speaking. Yes, there is a possibility that you might be making some mistakes but you also need to understand that it is totally new language for you, there are no shortcuts to succeed overnight, it will take time and don’t be afraid of investing your time.
A lot of people have been through this journey and honestly no one will judge you, So speak as much as you can. One more tip that helped me during my journey was that I started to listen to kids stories and reading those as well. Since it is a new language our ears not habitual of listening to it, so directly jumping to podcasts won’t help, start with easy stories and then go to more complex podcasts and news.
That’s all folks. Happy to answer any questions you might have. I also made a group where people talk in french…. Although not everyone participates, i try daily to engage with people and talk in french as much as I can….
One more thing….. we have made a lot of sacrifices be it emotionally, physically, mentally or financially, don’t let it go to waste. It only takes one win to cover all the losses, so go for it, do it for yourself and the people that are important to you. I hope everyone on this journey succeeds in whatever endeavours they want.
Thank you
Hey everyone….
I have recently given exam at alliance française bhopal and I would like to share my experience. I will tell everything from start for out of state candidates as well….
I booked my exam in april while I was still in Canada, around 6 april and my exam was on 21st may.
I came to India on 15th april and immediately started prepping for my exam. I have been learning french since last year but was not able to clear my exam despite giving three attempts of tef and one attempt of tcf in Canada.
About a month I did intense prep for speaking and writing as those were my weakest points. I had a tutor that helped me with these modules and I practiced a lot with gemini.
As the exam was approaching, me and mother got our tickets and hotel reservations. I am from Punjab so I took a flight from ATQ to DEL to BHO. We went there for 3 days and then came back from BHO to DEL to CHD. We stayed at Hotel Pride which was about 10 minutes from the venue. Hotel staff were very nice and friendly.
Now about the exam, the exam was supposed to start at 10 am so they emailed us to reach at 9 am, and of-course my mom insisted that we reach at 8:30am. So we reached there around 8:40ish. They took our our passport and “checked us” and then they took picture one by one. Now, you will receive an email about a week before exam, about your exam schedule. I had my speaking first along with other 4 more candidates.
They take batch of 5 students each for each module. I was the first to go for speaking so I was a little bit nervous.
For speaking, the examiners are very friendly and they are Indian so it was very easy for me to understand their accent. During speaking, there are two examiners present however only one engages in the conversation.
During task 1, they asked me 2-3 follow up questions but during task 3, they didn’t ask me any follow ups, I am still shocked that I was able to speak the whole time.
My speaking topics were
Task2: enquiring about a french course at french school.
Task3: quelle est la condition d’alimentation dans votre pays.
I was not able to understand the question so I answered the best I could.
Then they made me wait until each student from my batch was done with their speaking. Then they took us for listening.
They only have pen and paper based exam, so you will get a booklet with listening and reading questions and an omr sheet. Audio will play on computer and you will get headphones. Until 9th question, there were no options for listening.
Reading questions are in the same booklet and you use the back side of the same omr sheet.
For writing… they will give you another booklet and you have to provide your word count for each task.
Writing topics:
Task 1: telling your friend about language school
Task2: you went for picnic with your colleagues and write a blog explaining your day and everything
Task3: is consumption of meat necessary. One para was in favor, other was against.
That’s it, my overall experience in a nutshell
Hey everyone….
I have recently given exam at alliance française bhopal and I would like to share my experience. I will tell everything from start for out of state candidates as well….
I booked my exam in april while I was still in Canada, around 6 april and my exam was on 21st may.
I came to India on 15th april and immediately started prepping for my exam. I have been learning french since last year but was not able to clear my exam despite giving three attempts of tef and one attempt of tcf in Canada.
About a month I did intense prep for speaking and writing as those were my weakest points. I had a tutor that helped me with these modules and I practiced a lot with gemini.
As the exam was approaching, me and mother got our tickets and hotel reservations. I am from Punjab so I took a flight from ATQ to DEL to BHO. We went there for 3 days and then came back from BHO to DEL to CHD. We stayed at Hotel Pride which was about 10 minutes from the venue. Hotel staff were very nice and friendly.
Now about the exam, the exam was supposed to start at 10 am so they emailed us to reach at 9 am, and of-course my mom insisted that we reach at 8:30am. So we reached there around 8:40ish. They took our our passport and “checked us” and then they took picture one by one. Now, you will receive an email about a week before exam, about your exam schedule. I had my speaking first along with other 4 more candidates.
They take batch of 5 students each for each module. I was the first to go for speaking so I was a little bit nervous.
For speaking, the examiners are very friendly and they are Indian so it was very easy for me to understand their accent. During speaking, there are two examiners present however only one engages in the conversation.
During task 1, they asked me 2-3 follow up questions but during task 3, they didn’t ask me any follow ups, I am still shocked that I was able to speak the whole time.
My speaking topics were
Task2: enquiring about a french course at french school.
Task3: quelle est la condition d’alimentation dans votre pays.
I was not able to understand the question so I answered the best I could.
Then they made me wait until each student from my batch was done with their speaking. Then they took us for listening.
They only have pen and paper based exam, so you will get a booklet with listening and reading questions and an omr sheet. Audio will play on computer and you will get headphones. Until 9th question, there were no options for listening.
Reading questions are in the same booklet and you use the back side of the same omr sheet.
For writing… they will give you another booklet and you have to provide your word count for each task.
Writing topics:
Task 1: telling your friend about language school
Task2: you went for picnic with your colleagues and write a blog explaining your day and everything
Task3: is consumption of meat necessary. One para was in favor, other was against.
That’s it, my overall experience in a nutshell.
P.S: you can only use black pen and you have to bring your own pen
Has anyone given pen and paper tcf, how does it work for listening. Please let me know I have exam soon
Hello everyone,
I am appearing for exam soon and my biggest concern in speaking. Anyone here willing to share what helped them getting b2/Nclc7. I would really appreciate it.