What does TEF Canada include?
Editorial note — September 30, 2026: this article was published in 2020 and is retained as an archive. The format, retake and score-review deadlines, fees and document procedures may have changed. Check with the exam provider and your test centre before registering. TCF Canada: official guidance · TEF Canada: official guidance
I wish I’d found a post like this before taking my French exams for immigration. It would have made life so much easier! I wouldn’t have had to sift through gigabytes of YouTube videos to figure out what to expect.
Therefore, today I will write what parts and tasks TEF Canada consists of and, perhaps, I will help someone decide on the exam.
TEF Canada has 4 required sections:
LISTENING: 40 min, 60 questions
✔️8 questions: match the pictures with the audio messages you heard.
✔️26 questions: short messages. What is this? Advertising, weather forecast, news? What is the main theme? Economics, Olympic Games, politics? Just a phone call? For what purpose?
✔️16 questions: long messages - interviews, discussions, reasoning. The task is to understand in detail the intentions, feelings, desires, and relationships of the speakers.
✔️10 short phrases to understand whether you distinguish between intonations and similar French sounds.
READING: 60 min, 50 questions
✔️10 questions: What kind of document is in front of us? Advertising, announcement, postcard...? For what purpose was it written? By whom?
✔️25 questions: We have graphs, articles and letters in front of us. Our goal is to understand the details and answer questions.
✔️10 questions: Given - texts with gaps and incorrect order of sentences. The task is to fill in the gaps using the proposed options and restore the logic.
✔️5 questions: Understand the general meaning of phrases and choose how they can be paraphrased without changing the meaning.
SPEAKING: 15 min
✔️A: ask the examiner 12 questions to collect information on a given topic, for example, after reading an announcement or advertisement (5 minutes).
✔️B: briefly present the proposed article, advertisement, advertising offer, image and persuade your interlocutor to take advantage of the proposed opportunity, advice, service (10 minutes).
WRITING: 60 min
✔️A: write a continuation of the story in the genre of a short newspaper article in 80-100 words, using past tenses (20 minutes).
✔️B: write a letter to the editor in which you speak on a given topic, argue and defend your point of view within 200 words (40 minutes).
All sections are taken on the same day. The waiting time for test results is 2-4 weeks.
The certificate is valid for 2 years.
It is possible to retake no earlier than 30 days after the previous attempt.
TEF and TCF were developed by different organizations, so they are different.