Twelve minutes, three handovers
The door closes and the room is smaller than you pictured: a table, a chair on each side, an examiner with a folder of subjects and a device that will record everything you say.
You may have sat the listening and the reading on a computer that morning. This part is never on a screen. FEI runs the speaking test face to face, one candidate and one examiner, and the whole of it lasts 12 minutes, 2 of which are preparation.
The examiner asks for your name, repeats it for the recording, and reads you the rules:
- Three parts.
- The first and the third without preparation; 2 minutes to prepare the second.
- You may ask at any moment for a word or a question to be repeated or rephrased.
- Once the recording starts, it cannot be stopped.
That last sentence is the one I would ask every candidate to sit with. There is no pause button in this room, no going back to an answer, no blank to fill in later.
Listening and reading forgive a slow minute; you can make it up on the next question. Speaking does not. Which is why I think of the speaking test less as a test of French than as a test of how you hold a conversation under a clock, and why it helps to see the clock before anything else.
- Tâche 1 · 120 secondsDirected interview, no preparation. The examiner leads; you answer.
- Preparation · 120 secondsYou read the Tâche 2 subject; short notes on the scrap sheet only.
- Tâche 2 · 210 secondsInteraction, 3 minutes 30. You lead; the examiner answers.
- Tâche 3 · 270 secondsPoint of view, 4 minutes 30, no preparation. You hold the floor; the examiner may interrupt.
Look at who carries the conversation in each block:
- In the first, the examiner leads.
- In the second, the subject hands the lead to you.
- In the third, nobody leads: you speak alone, for longer than the first two tasks put together, and the only help on offer is an interruption.
Each task asks for a different kind of speaker, and the candidates I worry about are the ones who walk in prepared to be only one of them.
Who is listening, and for what
Two people mark you, and neither knows what the other decided.
- 1The examiner, in the roomTrained and licensed by FEI, gives a first assessment.
- 2A second marker, on the recordingAlso trained by FEI, listens independently.
- 3A level for each taskEach gives each of the three tasks a level, from “A1 non atteint” to C2.
- 4One mark out of 20A rule of calculation turns those six levels into one mark. Where the two are far apart, a third marking is done.
What they listen for
FEI groups what they listen for under three headings:
- Linguistic: vocabulary, grammar, ease, pronunciation, fluency.
- Pragmatic: interaction, structure, coherence, how far you develop the theme.
- Sociolinguistic: whether what you say fits the situation.
Read that list again and notice how little of it is about knowing the right word. Two of the three headings are about what you do with the words you have: whether you keep the exchange alive, build an answer that goes somewhere, and speak to the examiner as the situation demands.
That is the part most preparation skips.
The mark IRCC reads
And the mark is what IRCC reads, not the letter level. The table below is the one IRCC and FEI’s candidate handbook both print for speaking.
| NCLC | Speaking mark /20 | CEFR level |
|---|---|---|
| 10+ | 16–20 | C1–C2 |
| 9 | 14–15 | C1 |
| 8 | 12–13 | B2 |
| 7 | 10–11 | B2 |
| 6 | 7–9 | B1 |
| 5 | 6 | B1 |
| 4 | 4–5 | A2 |
Put together, that means the room gives you a number and nothing else. If your mark comes back one band short of the NCLC you needed, you will not be told why. Whatever teaches you why has to happen before you sit it.
Tâche 1: let the examiner lead, but give them something
“Voici la première tâche. Cette partie de l’épreuve dure 2 minutes. Est-ce que vous pouvez vous présenter ?”
That is the line FEI’s sample tells the examiner to say. There is no preparation, and the examiner leads. FEI’s aim is plain: to show you can hold an exchange with someone you do not know.
The examiner’s sheet in that sample lists the ground the questions can cover, and it is the ground of an ordinary life: family, friends, studies, work, habits, tastes, a past event, where and how you live, plans, travel, public services and associations.
The warm-up that is not one
Because the subjects are familiar, candidates treat this task as the warm-up, and that is the first mistake.
Picture a nurse in Manila who answers “Je m’appelle Ana, j’ai 34 ans, je suis infirmière” and stops. Three true facts in eight seconds, all correct, and now the examiner has to pull every next sentence out of her. Nothing she said was wrong. She simply gave the markers almost nothing to mark.
My advice for these two minutes is a habit, not a script: every answer goes one step past the question. The fact, then a reason, a detail or a small story.
Questions like “Qu’est-ce que vous avez fait le week-end dernier ?” or “Quels sont vos projets ?” (examples written for this guide, not taken from an exam) are invitations to use the past and the future; a candidate who answers both in the present tense has turned the invitation down.
And vous, throughout. The examiner is, by FEI’s own definition of the task, someone you do not know.
Tâche 2: now you lead
Then the roles turn round, and this, I think, is where the most avoidable marks are lost.
The examiner reads you a subject that sets up an everyday situation and who each of you is, and your job is to get information by asking. FEI’s candidate sheet is blunt: you speak first, and you lead the conversation.
- to prepare, less if you say you are ready
- 2 min
- of dialogue
- 3 min 30
You may take short notes, but only on the scrap sheet the examiner gives you, never on the subject.
FEI’s published subjects show the shape. In one, the examiner runs an association that helps people in difficulty, and you must find out how it works, with leads in brackets: actions, members, funding.
Keywords, not a list of questions
The common advice is to use the 2 minutes to write out a list of questions. I disagree.
A written list produces exactly the failure the markers are trained to hear: one question per bracket, read out in order, each answer ignored, and silence at the two-minute mark.
Use the preparation for keywords, one per bracket, and spend the dialogue listening. The examiner’s answers are your material.
“Vous avez dit que les sorties ont lieu le samedi : c’est toute l’année ?”
A question like that is worth more than any question you prepared, because it proves you understood and can build on what you heard. That is what FEI means by interaction.
How to ask, and how to end
- Vary how you ask: intonation (“Il faut un équipement spécial ?”), est-ce que, inversion (“Combien de membres l’association compte-t-elle ?”).
- React the way people do (“Ah, c’est pratique”).
- Close the exchange yourself, with thanks and a decision, rather than letting the clock close it for you.
Register follows the roles in the subject: a club manager, a landlord or the head of an association is vous, with the conditional of politeness, “Je voudrais savoir…”, “Pourriez-vous me dire…”. Only a subject that makes the two of you friends invites tu.
Tâche 3: you hold the floor alone
The last instruction in FEI’s sample asks you to speak on a subject:
“de façon argumentée (en utilisant des exemples, en justifiant vos idées, en essayant de me convaincre) pendant 4 minutes 30 secondes.”
No preparation: the examiner reads the question and the time starts. FEI’s published subjects are short and open:
- whether travel makes us better people;
- what makes a country pleasant to live in;
- whether we can live without oil.
None of them has a right answer, and I think that is the most freeing thing a candidate can understand about this task. You are not being asked what is true. You are being asked to be convincing for four and a half minutes.
A modest position, defended well, beats a brilliant one abandoned after ninety seconds.
So give the time a shape before you need it.
- 1Say where you standIn the first sentence.
- 2Give two or three reasonsEach with an example from your own life, your country or your work, because an example is what turns an opinion into an argument.
- 3Grant the other side a point“Certes… mais…”, then return to your own.
If you need a moment at the start, take it aloud, in French: “C’est une question intéressante. Laissez-moi réfléchir un instant.” Silence costs you; a thinking phrase does not.
Expect to be interrupted.
FEI’s handbook allows the examiner to put questions about your view, for example to make an argument more precise, and I would treat that as the examiner handing you material, not as a sign that something has gone wrong. Answer, then pick up the thread: “Pour revenir à ce que je disais…”
Why memorised answers fail
Somewhere online, there is a bank of “model answers” for Tâche 3 subjects, and somewhere a candidate is learning them by heart. I understand the temptation; it feels like control. It is the worst bet in the exam.
FEI lists, among a candidate’s duties, a commitment to commit no fraud during the tests, “including by reciting a text learned by heart.”
Its handbook says the speaking test may be rated “A1 non atteint” if a candidate recites memorised texts, because a recitation does not show the candidate’s real level, and that the examiner may interrupt with questions when recitation is suspected.
Think about what that interruption does to a memorised answer: it is precisely the moment a script cannot survive.
What is worth learning by heart is smaller: frames, not texts.
Know them until they come without effort, know your own facts well enough to say them three ways, and let each answer be built in the room, for the question actually asked.
The clock is the exam
If I had to name the one thing that separates the candidates who reach their band from those who fall one short, it would not be grammar. It would be how comfortable they are with the clock:
- of answering
- 2 min
- of asking
- 3 min 30
- of holding the floor
- 4 min 30
You cannot learn that silently. Rehearsing in your head hides the pauses, the words you cannot find and the moment you run out of things to say.
Practise out loud, at each task’s real length, with the 2 minutes of preparation for Tâche 2 only.
Since FEI’s marks come back without comments, the feedback has to come from your practice. That is the gap Salut Canada’s examiner is built for: it speaks with you live and runs the three tasks at the exam’s timings, preparation time included, on a computer.
Afterwards your speaking is marked on the exam’s table of levels and your errors are listed with their corrections, so you know what to fix before the next try.
Its mark is practice feedback, not an official result. Only FEI marks your TCF, and Salut Canada is not FEI.
Sources
FEI, TCF Canada page; FEI, Manuel du candidat TCF; FEI, sample speaking paper for the TCF tout public, Canada and Québec; FEI, Évaluation des épreuves du TCF; FEI, Déroulement d’une passation du TCF; FEI, Mes droits et devoirs de candidat au TCF; IRCC, Language testing (Express Entry). Checked on 25 October 2026.