I’m looking to learn French and have recently completed my A1 level. I’m now looking for one-on-one lessons to improve my French and prepare for the TEF Canada exam, which I’m planning to take in March next year.
Does anyone have a good French teacher/tutor they would recommend, preferably someone experienced with TEF Canada preparation?

Took the exam on 15 August 2026 (two days ago) at AF Vancouver and got the results today morning!

https://preview.redd.it/8p2s64gph1kh1.png?width=1580&format=png&auto=webp&s=c853a311ef8b12f762dfe8711bafb2caf7edb48b

​WARNING: Long, long post ahead. If you want the TLDR, just read "Overall tips".

Overall tips:

1. HIGHLY RECOMMEND Tefcanada.ca (or tefcanada.info - they changed their url I believe). This site feels unreal.
   1. What I did:
      1. I bought the 7 day basic set 1 week before my exam
      2. Did 3/5 reading tests and 2/5 listening tests.
      3. Did a bunch of their writing practice prompts graded by ChatGPT.
      4. Did a bunch of their speaking exercises with my French friends.
   2. Results:
      1. Got a number of repeat questions for reading/listening.
      2. No writing repeat prompts for me (but another candidate during my exam day got one of the prompts I had previously done from this site).
      3. Both my speaking tasks were on the site and I had practiced them.
2. As the exam approaches try to limit ALL consumption of a language other than French:
   1. For 10 days before my exam, I stopped talking to all my friends (lol), didn't listen to any other music / TV / media. Tried to only read the news in French, and set my social media to French.
3. Note: Trying to consume media at a level much higher than yours will NOT help you (for the most part).
4. Transform what you already like doing into French:
   1. I really like: reading news, scrolling Twitter/Instagram, audiobooks, watching romcoms.
   2. I did: RFI / lemonde for news, Twitter in French, deleted Instagram, French audiobooks, English romcoms IN French.

Section Breakdown:

SPEAKING:

You can be really methodical about speaking practice since there are just two formats you need to learn.

Learn phrases that work for you. E.g. In English, I naturally always say "Anyways", which I directly replaced with "En tout cas" and "En fait". If you try to memorise phrases that you wouldn't normally use, they won't naturally come up in speech for you.

SECTION A:

1. REACT: The examiner will respond with half-answers. Ask for more follow-up details. ("Précisez-vous...")
   1. Example: You ask about cost and they respond that there are different costs for different group sizes. You HAVE to follow-up with something like "how much would it be for a group of 4 people?".
2. Learn a few different question types by heart: Location, duration, cost, schedule (start/end), prerequisites, reservation (how to make it/in advance/etc.)
3. Make stuff up and have fun with it! e.g. I would just start talking about how I'm a mother and my daughter loves Disney and would love a themed party, etc.

SECTION B:

1. At the start, defeat all arguments you don't want to deal with.
   1. E.g. if it's about a cat, say "I know you LOVE cats...", if it's about a writing competition say "I know you're a great writer...", if it's about volunteering say "I know you've been looking for a volunteer opportunity for a while..." <- this one really helps.
2. Make stuff up!!!!!!!!!!!!! Really get into the "Je sais que tu..." format - remember you're talking to a friend and you can just make up their life experiences.
3. REACT:
   1. If your friend expresses uncertainty, make sure to reaffirm them not just argue immediately ("Je te comprends... / Tu as raison...")
4. Checklist of some template things to memorize:
   1. "Positive phrases":
      1. Ce serait une expérience inoubliable
      2. Je pense que ce serait une opportunité indispensable
      3. C’est important de faire des choses dont on n’a pas l’habitude
      4. ça ne coûte rien d'essayer
   2. "Don't worry" phrases coupled with "They take care of / provide everything"
   3. "You have to take care of yourself / do nice things phrases":
      1. "You work too much"
      2. "You need to de-stress / have fun"
   4. "This will improve your life":
      1. "...développer tes compétences..."
      2. Améliorer ta capacité...

WRITING:

Be methodical about this one as well because it can be pretty templated.

SECTION A:

1. Read RFI / lemonde / any other small news reports. Learn the sentence structure of passive journalistic writing well.
2. Create a template that works for you.
3. Create a list of phrases & expressions that work for you.
4. Key subjects to learn vocabulary for:
   1. Police: la police, autorités, commissariat, enquête...
      1. This is the most helpful one. You can twist almost any story into involving the police.
   2. Lottery (for some reason, pretty popular topic): winners, prize, luck, etc.
   3. Management/Officials: putting measures into place, preventing future incidents, stricter rules, being sorry/happy for the situation...
   4. Narrative adjectives/verbs: suddenly, deafening noise, blinding light, crash, shockingly, luckily, worried, etc.

SECTION B:

1. Make one introduction that you completely memorise and twist for pour / contre / au milieu opinions. Mine was:
   1. Votre article au sujet de [ sujet ] a retenu mon attention...
      1. Contre / Au milieu: Bien que je comprenne (note: subjonctif) votre point de vue, je suis [ si au milieu: en grande partie ] en désaccord avec votre affirmation pour plusieurs raisons que je vais développer dans cette lettre.
      2. Pour: Je suis tout à fait d’accord et je vous écris pour vous faire part de mon opinion à cette affirmation.
2. Memorise a simple outro: Mine was just "Cordialement..." + my name.
3. During the test, make an extremely high-level bullet point list of your 3 arguments.
4. Use a fake study for one of your arguments:
   1. "Un rapport publié par l'UBC a montré que..." + result that supports your point, e.g. "60% of students feel stressed..."
5. Optional: pretend to be an experienced person in some field: "En tant que [ person with experience, e.g. un chercheur ], je crois que..."

After getting your writing graded by someone / AI, of course take the time to revise and understand your mistakes. Then, come back to your original essay after 2-3 days, and correct it yourself. This will help you in the last 2-3 mins of correction time during the exam. Take particular note of accord, accents, spelling, tenses, gender.

LISTENING:

1. Podcasts (I only used InnerFrench), audiobooks, RFI / news reports, TV shows, (and optionally music but to a lesser extent).
2. HIGHLY RECOMMEND listening to the Percy Jackson audiobooks in French. This worked incredibly for me - I listened at .85x speed from books 3-5 from the library. The reasons this helped:
   1. I read PJO as a kid, and knew the books pretty well, so I was able to follow the plot.
   2. Note that the start was extremely difficult because I didn't know the turns of phrases and the narrative style (Book 3 was a struggle to get through).
   3. PJO is written in 1st person and uses simple, straightforward language. This makes it REALLY HELPFUL to learn expressions you'd use casually - he says things like "jeter un coup d'oeil" and "je me suis rendu compte que..." ALL the time.
3. TV shows / Media:
   1. Call my Agent (Dix pour cent) on Netflix. Please note that this is hard, and has a lot of swearing and language you won't necessarily use. Start with English subtitles if it's too hard. Mostly recommend this because it's really entertaining.
   2. Love is Blind, France (lol). Helps with learning friend-to-friend communication and turns of phrases. Also helpful that on the "dates", participants ask a lot of questions which helps you learn how to ask and answer questions.
   3. Movies: French Lover, Monsieur Lazhar (helpful for quebecoise and french education system), 'Montreal, ma belle', and started just watching English romcoms with French audio/subs
4. Books:
   1. Just try to read children's / young adult books you already know well in your native language.
5. Practice tests of course. The free ones on youtube are often easier than the real test, but more practice is always helpful so just keep doing them and revise.

READING:

1. News:
   1. https://www.rfi.fr/fr/
   2. https://www.lemonde.fr/
2. Children's books:
   1. More basic than your reading level is TOTALLY OKAY
   2. Check out your local library and grab something random!
3. Comprehension écrit practice tests - really help familiarise you with the format and verbs you don't know.
4. FALSE FRIENDS - if you are an English speaker in particular, you have to really take care of faux amis. There are SO MANY similar words across the two languages that mean completely different things. Make a list of these to memorise as you encounter them.

My personal history (for context):

(You can ignore this part)

Exam History:

• Two previous attempts at TEF Canada for a different reason - Goal was to get NCLC5+ for the Francophone Mobility Visa.
  • April 2024 (AF Seattle) -> NCLC: Reading 4, Listening 4, Writing 6, Speaking 5
  • August 2024 (AF Malta) -> NCLC: Reading 6, Listening 5, Writing 5, Speaking 6

French Learning History:

• Learned French from the age of 9 - 17 (8 years, 2008-2016) (took IGCSE French).
• Stopped learning French completely except for one 10-week university class in 2020.
• Started studying again in March 2024 for TEF which I took 1 month later in Seattle.

My strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

• Accent: I learned from quite a young age which made my pronunciation not bad
• Speaking fluency: Owing to the above, I have a few natural sounding phrases when I speak french, and I am able to make kind of natural hesitation sounds (the connectors).
• Recall: Once I start studying, certain things do come back to me because I started learning young. It's deeply buried information in my brain so it's easy for me to understand when I hear it, but really hard for me to reproduce.

Weaknesses:

My #1 issue was foundational French knowledge:

• Completely forgot grammar, conjugation, spelling, accents, genders.
  • This info sticks with recency, but since I learned all of that about 15 years ago I completely forgot it.
  • Nice thing about speaking for me is that conjugation, spelling and accents don't matter (most verb conjugated forms sound kinda the same, though it depends)
• Forgot a large amount of specific subject vocabulary:
  • When you take french classes, you slowly learn individual topics and memorise relevant vocabulary (health, school, environment, etc.) however since it's been more then 10 years and I didn't have time, it was hard to remember all of that for me.

Good luck to everyone and feel free to ask me any questions or clarifications in the comments!

Since I posted my TEF Canada result, my inbox has been bombarded with people asking how I got C1 in speaking and B2 in writing. So I thought I’ll just share what I did.
For speaking section B, apart from grammar and vocabulary, I mainly focused on sounding natural and informal.

I practiced around 50-60 topics in one-on-one sessions, so I already had some ideas in my mind for most of the arguments/topics.

The structure I usually followed was:
Reaction to the examiner’s argument → give a solution → example/advantage → encouragement → “Tu comprends ?”, “Ça te tente ?” etc.

But honestly, the biggest thing for me was practicing so many topics with my mentor. Because of this, I became used to speaking under pressure.

So during the actual exam, I was kind of like, “Give me any topic, I’ll do it.” 😂

For writing section B, I only used a template for the introduction and conclusion. The 3 arguments in the body were 100% my own.

I developed my arguments by giving reasons (parce que) and relevant examples. I think developing your arguments is the most important part. At the end of the day, whatever you write should actually make sense and answer the topic.

For writing too, I practiced at least 50 topics and got them checked by a teacher. This helped me become familiar with almost all kinds of topics and also helped me understand how to develop my ideas.
So yeah, for me the main thing was practice, but practice with the right guidance.

Just memorising templates won’t be enough. You need to practice enough that you’re comfortable speaking and developing ideas when you’re actually under pressure in the exam.

Hello, fellow TEF Canada candidates!
Can anyone who gave the exam this year tell me if you were free to manage your whole time (60min) during EE questions as you wish?
I never tried TEF and I saw a video from 2024 where the person said it was mandatory to use 25 minutes for Section A and 35 minutes for section B. However, I believe I could score better with like 20/40 or even 15/45. Is it possible for me to manage my time the way I want or does the system force the candidate to use the 60min as 25/35?
Thanks!

I am sharing my journey
Got refusal in CEC in 2025
Start learning french personal training 1 on 1 classes in September 2025
First attempt june 2026 and only in speaking clb 6 rest all modules above clb 8
Second attempt july 2026 Cleared TEF reading listening clb 11 writing speaking clb 9
Got ITA 6 August 2026
Never give up 💪💪

I applied for Francophone Mobility Work Permit with Restoration back in May. Still under process to date. My employer is unable to hold the position on the original branch and is giving me another job offer for another branch. Same employer, same province, same NOC, same salary, employment package etc. The only thing that changed is the location of the branch. My question is, to those who is or was in the same situation, can I just send a webform with the new job offer letter and letter of explanation with this? Does my enployer needs to create another offer of employment in the portal? I can’t withdraw my application as I’m already beyond my 90 days restoration period and that would put me out of status. Appreciate all your inputs. Thank you.

It’s been 7 months of full-time studying french. All my listening, reading and writing is C1 but I can NOT get CLB 7 for speaking (trying the test 3 times already).

I’m actively reading people’s experiences + advises and paying for tutors, but I feel DEFEATED.

First time, my speaking lacked various tenses and it was clearly B1 level.
Second time, I improved my tenses + using connectors + simple subjunctive and even use past tense to convince the examiner, saying “l’année dernière, j’ai vécue une expérience similaire…” but lacked “being natural” (i guess, because what else? I thought i got it, BUT HELNO, I was 10 points away from CLB 7)
Third time, being natural, being on points with all of the above and guess what, CLB 5.

At this point, I need serious help. And no, I wont do TCF, I’m not starting from scratch 👨🏻‍🌾

My fourth one is in one month and I don’t want to write another help me post, so please help me !!!

Any suggestions cuz I didnt score well in tef

Hello I really need centre recommendation to achieve clb 5 score in TEF. I have been trying at gb language it was my fifth attempt I still didn’t get my desired score. Last time I got 225 in speaking I was just one point less and this time my speaking was so good I didn’t take any pause I got only 144 score I’m shocked with my result. I speak really good and practising a lot. Can you guys please recommend me any Centre where it’s not that hard to get clb 5 please this is my humble request thanks

Has anyone gave Tef exam in alliance Française Chandigarh. Wanna share the experience plz how are the examiners . Are they indian or native . Any leads would be appreciated. Thanks