Start at the end
Picture the evening you decide to do it. Fifteen tabs open: a forum thread on Tâche 3, a centre’s booking page, a video promising NCLC 7 in a month, a calculator of Express Entry points. Every tab is about a different stage of the same road, and none of them tells you which stage comes first.
Most people read about the TCF Canada in the order it happens to them: book a seat, sit the test, wait, then find out what the result is worth. We think that order is backwards.
Read the road from the far end: from what IRCC will do with your result, back to the day you book.
That is how these guides are arranged, and how this page walks through them.
- 1Know what IRCC readsFour NCLC levels, one per section. Guides: tracking your progress, the study plan.
- 2Know the rulesNo re-marking until autumn 2027; 20 days between sittings. Guides: the Rules section.
- 3Know the testFour sections in 2 hours 47. Guides: the speaking test, the writing test.
- 4Prepare from your resultsWeakest section first, your own mistakes, aloud and by hand. Guides: the Preparing section.
- 5Book the seatA centre on FEI’s list, asked the right questions. Guides: your country.
- 6Sit, wait, use itResults within 15 working days; valid two years.
What IRCC actually reads
Begin with the destination. IRCC does not read “your French”. It reads four separate levels, one per section, each converted from your TCF result on its own table.
Express Entry’s Federal Skilled Worker Program asks for at least NCLC 7 in all four abilities of your first official language. The same bar, NCLC 7 in all four French abilities, earns additional points in the Comprehensive Ranking System: 25 if your English is CLB 4 or lower or untested, 50 if your English is also CLB 5 or higher in all four. It is also the condition of IRCC’s French-language proficiency category.
- listening, out of 699
- 458
- reading, out of 699
- 453
- writing
- 10/20
- speaking
- 10/20
Notice that nothing averages. Three sections at NCLC 9 and one at 6 is, for a programme that wants 7, a miss. Your weakest section is your result, and almost every piece of advice on this site follows from that sentence.
It is why our guide to tracking your progress tells you to watch four numbers instead of one, and why a study plan should start from your weakest section rather than from a calendar.
A result with a shelf life
FEI’s certificate is valid for two years from the day results are issued, and IRCC wants results less than two years old both when you complete your Express Entry profile and when you apply for permanent residence. Sit too early and a slow file can outlive your result. The date you sit is part of the plan, not the start of it.
Two rules that changed the maths
Then the rules, because two of them have quietly changed what a sensible candidate does.
- between two sittings, as many sittings as you like
- 20 days
- for results, once FEI receives the session’s material
- 15 working days
- when FEI plans to resume re-marking speaking and writing
- Autumn 2027
From the sessions of 1 September 2026, France Éducation international (FEI), which runs the test, accepts no requests to re-mark speaking or writing. It calls this a temporary suspension, for about a year. Your two expression papers are still marked twice, independently and blind; what is gone is the second look on request. Our guide to the suspension of re-marking explains why that matters less than the panic suggests, and more than most plans admit.
The other rule looks generous: sit as often as you like, 20 days apart. But results take up to 15 working days to arrive, and then your centre has to have a seat. The 20 days are a floor, not a schedule.
Put the two rules together and one habit should end: sitting the TCF “to see where you stand”.
Find out where you stand somewhere it costs nothing. Book the sitting you mean to pass.
Four tests sharing a day
The TCF Canada is four tests that happen to share a morning, and each asks for a different kind of candidate.
- Listening · 35 min39 multiple-choice questions, scored out of 699.
- Reading · 60 min39 multiple-choice questions, scored out of 699.
- Writing · 60 minThree tasks, each with a minimum and a maximum number of words, marked out of 20.
- Speaking · 12 minThree tasks face to face with an examiner, 2 of the minutes to prepare, marked out of 20.
Look at the last block. Twelve minutes decide one of your four levels, and they are the only part never taken on a computer. The speaking test, minute by minute shows how the conversation changes hands three times in those twelve minutes.
Writing is the opposite problem: an hour, three texts and word limits that can get the whole paper rated “A1 not reached” however good the French inside them. Our guide to the writing test is, at heart, a guide to counting.
The clock is the thread
If our guides share one conviction, it is this: the clock is the exam. Candidates rarely fall short for want of French. They fall short because they never practised producing it inside someone else’s minutes. And no script will save the minutes: FEI treats a text learned by heart and recited as fraud.
Prepare from your own results
Only now, with the destination, the rules and the test in view, does preparation make sense. Most of what passes for preparation is effort that feels useful and moves nothing.
- A fixed eight-week plan, the four sections in turn
- Hours studied
- Rereading corrections
- Rehearsing speaking in your head
- Typed practice for a paper test
Each of those guides makes one argument at length. Read the one for the section that is holding you back, not all five in order.
Salut Canada is built on the same principles: the four sections at the exam’s timings, a study plan that reads your results, an examiner for speaking aloud, and live classes for when you want a person. Its marks are practice feedback, not a result. Only FEI marks your TCF, and Salut Canada is not FEI.
Plan the seat early, book it last
The last stretch is the one candidates think of first: where to sit it. FEI does not set dates itself. Approved centres run sessions as their means allow, and they set the dates, the format and the fee.
- India7 on FEI’s listfour with a computer option
- Nigeria2 on FEI’s listLagos and Port Harcourt
- Philippines1 on FEI’s listCebu City
Seven centres for a country of more than a billion people. Two for Nigeria, both in the south. One for an archipelago. In much of the world, the TCF Canada begins with a journey, and a journey changes the maths of a retake.
That is why our guides to India, Nigeria and the Philippines argue for one well-prepared attempt, and list the questions to put to the centre before any money moves.
Then the wait, within 15 working days of FEI receiving the session’s material, and a result you have already planned how to use. That is the whole road. The guides above take it one stretch at a time.
Sources
- France Éducation international (FEI), TCF Canada page: the four tests and their timings, the 20 days between sittings, results within 15 working days, two years’ validity, the temporary suspension of re-marking from the sessions of 1 September 2026 and its planned resumption in autumn 2027, sessions run by approved centres.
- FEI, Évaluation des épreuves du TCF: double blind marking of speaking and writing; FEI, Mes droits et devoirs de candidat au TCF: reciting a text learned by heart as fraud.
- FEI, list of TCF centres (India, Nigeria, Philippines).
- IRCC, Express Entry: language test results (the TCF Canada and NCLC table, results less than two years old); Comprehensive Ranking System criteria; category-based selection.
- Checked on 25 October 2026.