The day is the exam
Picture the morning of your test. You have done the work: the verb tables, the sample questions, a few speaking tasks recorded on your phone and played back with a wince.
- Then the listening section starts, 39 questions in 35 minutes, and it does not stop for you.
- An hour of reading follows.
- Then an hour of writing, three tasks on one clock.
- And somewhere in the day, 12 minutes face to face with an examiner you have never met.
France Éducation international (FEI), which runs the TCF Canada, puts the whole test at 2 hours 47 minutes. Most candidates have practised every part of it. Far fewer have ever sat it.
I think that is the most common mistake in TCF preparation, and the least discussed: people train the French and never rehearse the day. Knowing an answer in your armchair and producing it against a clock, tired, with a stranger listening, are different skills. Only the second one is marked.
Why testing yourself beats rereading
This is not a hunch. In 2013 a team of psychologists led by John Dunlosky reviewed ten common study techniques for the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
Why the bad habits survive
An older experiment explains why. In 2006 Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke had students either reread prose passages or take recall tests on them.
Five minutes later, the rereaders did better. Two days and a week later, the students who had been tested remembered substantially more, even though rereading had left the other group feeling more confident. That is the trap in one sentence:
Rereading feels like learning. Testing is what sticks.
Then there is the pressure itself
In 2016, in Science, Amy Smith, Victoria Floerke and Ayanna Thomas taught 120 students words and pictures, then put some of them through a standard laboratory stress test.
- No loss of memory under stress
- Remembered less, most of all when stressed
It was one study, on word lists rather than a language exam, and its authors said so. But it points where every candidate hopes it will: what you have practised pulling out of your head holds up better when your heart is racing.
The clock is the hard part
Look at where the time goes. The section people fear most, speaking, is the shortest.
The long stretch is the middle: two hours of reading and writing, back to back, where what gives out first is usually attention, not French. A single practice question never rehearses that. A full section on its clock does.
- Listening · 35 min39 multiple-choice questions, sat in a group
- Reading · 60 min39 multiple-choice questions, sat in a group
- Writing · 60 min3 tasks on one clock, sat in a group
- Speaking · 12 min3 tasks face to face with an examiner, 2 minutes of them to prepare
In Salut Canada each section is a timed test of its own, on the exam’s clock, so you can sit one on a lunch break or all four in a morning. My advice is to do both, in that order.
What a mock is like, section by section
Listening
Listening is the section that forgives least, and FEI’s own advice to candidates is to stay as focused as possible during it. Salut Canada’s listening test is kinder than the day: each recording plays as its question appears, but you may play it again and go back.
I would refuse that kindness. Give yourself one listening, answer, move on. The replay is there for practice; the mock is for finding out what you catch the first time.
Reading
Reading is a test of pacing. The papers climb from A1 to C2, the hardest questions at the end, so the candidate who lingers over question 12 pays for it at question 36.
Writing
Writing gives three tasks one hour between them, in an editor with no spell-check, no autocorrect and no automatic capitals: every accent is yours.
The third task counts most, and it is the one most people leave too little time for. Our guide to the writing tasks says what each one asks.
| Section | Format and clock |
|---|---|
| Listening | 39 questions · 35 min |
| Reading | 39 questions · 60 min |
| Writing | 3 tasks · 60 min |
| Speaking | 3 tasks · 12 min |
Speaking to someone who answers
Speaking is where rehearsing alone breaks down. You can read alone; you cannot hold a conversation alone. On the day it is the one section sat face to face, with an examiner who asks, waits and asks again.
Salut Canada’s examiner is an AI that speaks to you live and answers what you say, through the three tasks at the exam’s timings:
- a 2-minute interview,
- a 3-minute-30 exchange after 2 minutes to prepare,
- then 4 minutes 30 defending a point of view.
It will not sound like the stranger you meet on the day, and I do not think it should try. What it trains is the thing that fails people: speaking for four and a half minutes without stopping, in order, in French, while someone is listening.
Our guide to the examiner goes further.
If your centre uses paper, practise on paper
FEI leaves it to each centre whether you sit on paper or on a computer, and the centre tells you which.
If yours is paper, typing every practice answer trains the wrong hand: no delete key, no copy and paste, and a sentence you cannot take back once it is in ink.
So writing practice in Salut Canada takes handwriting.
- 1WriteWrite your answer on paper.
- 2PhotographPhotograph your pages.
- 3CheckYou check the text against your pages before handing it in.
- 4MarkedIt is then marked, with corrections and a model answer.
The timed writing test itself stays typed; handwriting is for practice.
Trust the errors more than the number
The two halves of a mock deserve different trust.
Listening and reading: a wrong answer is wrong, and the total sits on the exam’s 699-point scale. What stays an estimate is the series: it is Salut Canada’s own, not FEI’s, and no practice series is the one you will sit.
Writing and speaking are judged, and here the judge is an AI. I would read its list of errors before its number. The errors are concrete and they repeat:
- the same agreement missed,
- the same tense dodged,
- the task that ran out of things to say.
The number is a level an AI estimates, not the one an FEI examiner will give.
Why it matters more this year
From the sessions of 1 September 2026, FEI no longer accepts requests to re-mark speaking or writing, for about a year, with the service due back in autumn 2027. The mark you get on the day is the mark you keep.
And IRCC sets its minimum for all four abilities at once:
- Jobs in TEER 0 or 1
- NCLC 7
- Jobs in TEER 2 or 3
- NCLC 5
So a strong reading score will not rescue a weak speaking one. A mock is the cheapest place to find the weak one.
How I would use the mocks
Not every night. A mock is a measurement, and measuring every day mostly measures your mood.
- 1Sit one of each section earlyAs a baseline, even if it hurts.
- 2Turn what it finds into practiceThe errors in your writing become drills, and the study plan follows your results.
- 3Sit againOnce that practice has had time to work, not the day after.
In the last weeks
Sit all four in one morning:
- a quiet room,
- the phone in another one,
- one listening per recording,
- paper if your centre uses paper.
The aim is simple. When the real 2 hours 47 minutes begin, nothing about them should be new except the questions.
Sources
FEI, TCF Canada page; IRCC, Express Entry language requirements; J. Dunlosky and others, Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013; H. L. Roediger and J. D. Karpicke, Test-enhanced learning, Psychological Science, 2006; A. M. Smith, V. A. Floerke and A. K. Thomas, Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress, Science, 2016. Checked on 25 October 2026.