TCF first hand experience report

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Cavesa
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TCF first hand experience report

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jul 29, 2021 3:18 pm

Hi fellow forum members,

As readers of my log know, I had to take a TCF in spite of having passed my DALF C2 6 years and a few months ago. So, I found the only one happening in July, and had an extremely short vacation in Paris. More about that perhaps in my log. But I think there are not that many people, who can compare the two exams (or actually three, DELF B2, DALF C2, and TCF graded C2. I got 667 out of 669 points as the global score for the obligatory parts) and give their opinion, so I'd like to share mine in hopes it might be useful to some of you.

As you probably know, DELF/DALF is valid for life (unless a bureaucrat tells you they don't give a damn), TCF is valid for two years. My recent experience with my DALF being "too old" by 2 months proves, that it may not really matter much in the end. Take whichever you want.

A huge advantage of the TCF is the rapidity, more testing dates per year, a provisoire result right away at least for some of the parts, and a certificate in a few weeks. I also generally like more the model "just take it and we'll tell you the level",over the other one, where you risk wasting money due to wrong self or teacher's assessment and either failing or getting a too low certificate with an unnecessarily high score.

In general, I'd say the TCF format is easier, and the DALF/DELF are more precise. But the differences in the various sections are a bit more complex When it comes to the organisation of the exam, I've seen some troubles in both cases (but I haven't tried dozens of testing centers). I still remember the broken rules during my DELF B2, and now there was some chaotic time management and they also leaft us unsupervised (and therefore unable to go smoothly from part 2, that I finished 25 minutes earlier, to part 3), which almost made me miss my bus. I don't buy the "hey, they are French, of course it is chaos" excuse, I've seen the French organise much more massive exams smoothly.

But to the exam itself:

Compréhension orale
Maitrise des structures de la langue : grammaire et lexique
Compréhension écrite
Expression orale
Expression écrite

There are five parts. Three obligatory, two voluntary (the active skills). I took the whole set, because I couldn't get any official info whether just the obligatory ones are sufficient for my purpose or not. Better safe than sorry. And given the whole price of my journey to Paris, I really didn't want to save a bit just to have the certificate refused later. The obligatory parts cost 150 euro, the whole exam costs 250.

There were approximately 15 candidates (I haven't counted), but only 4 of us were taking the complete exam. So, the majority went to the computer room, and the 4 of us waited for the oral part and went to the computers after the first wave. The waiting was horrible.

Expression orale

This is a very fast exam, which may surprise you. 12 minutes, all is recorded, you are graded by 2 people. One is with you, one will listen to the recording. You get three tasks. If I understood the paper under the examiner's hands right, each task is supposed to sort you on one third of the cefr scale. (And yes, I saw the lady check the C2 box, so I hope the other person will agree).

1.the introduction. You get 2 minutes. This is the only part you can prepare beforehand. Honestly, I hadn't prepared much. I think you don't need to be stressed about covering your whole life, or all the aspects of self presentation taught in the basic coursebooks. If you fill the 2 minutes mainly with two or three areas of your life, it should be ok, it is really really fast.

2.the "interview". You are to question someone about something. My task was something like this: a friend (played by the examiner) had just returned from a vacation in the mountains and I was to get as much info from her as possible, with the intention of planning my own vacation. You are really supposed to ask as many pertinent questions as possible. It was ok, rather different from any other exam discussion format I've experienced. And rather weird for me, as I am more used (especially from work) to ask and listen to people talk. But here, the rules were different. It took 3,5 minutes, if I remember well. Hmm, perhaps you should imagine the most nosy and talkative person in your neighbourhood and get inspired by them. They may be driving you crazy, but I'd bet they'd get a high score! :-D

3.An argumented opinion of something. This can vary a lot. You get a topic, you are to present your opinion on it, sort of convince your public. My topic was rather easy, something like "what's your opinion on people, who don't want to have children". I had several minutes, I think 4 or 4,5. It was an excellent topic for me, really allowing me to show off :-D I could have continued for longer. No idea how I'd deal with something I haven't ever thought about. (If anyone wonders: I recommended respecting the choice of everybody about such a huge thing, as they know the best how to live their lives. And my arguments drew from my job, discussions with people my age with various stances, internet articles, etc). In general, I'd say people used to arguing on the internet will have an advantage here :-D (only half joking)

Compréhension orale

The first one of the obligatory exams. It was rather long and I hated having no control over the pace of the exam (as there was very little air in the room after the previous group, no windows, and I had the mask, I really didn't feel ok at times).

It was rather fast too. 25 minutes for like 29 items. We got good headphones, each test was individual, with different tasks taken from the pool. You get to listen to everything only once (unlike in the DELF), you pick one answer out of four. The difficulty progresses more or less gradually. In many cases, you can guess what will the question be while you listen to the sample.

I got only 622 out of 699, my weakest result of the three. One of the tasks was difficult for me on the comprehension level, and two or three were the classical "two options make sense, so what does the author probably think?" stuff. I think it is an overall well thought out test, even though I'd have a hard time identifying which parts are really supposed to test the B levels. I'd say the candidates at the B levels have it the hardest, when it comes to uncertainty and facing the test, but that's just my impression.

As to the preparation: I think TV series lovers will be ok, but this experience just confirms my belief that vast majority of audiobooks and documentaries is simply not hard enough for the C levels. Your coursebooks' audio (any level) will be helpful (similar types of "real life" audio), but definitely not sufficient in quantity.

Maitrise des structures de la langue

I think this is a part, where you can earn points quite well, as your vocab and grammar are tested by choosing one of 4 options. As usual, I think the Progressives are the best preparation,and of course tons of input alongside that. Nothing too surprising there. I found 2 questions to be a bit challenging out of the 20 (not sure if I remember the number well. There were 91 questions total, but not sure about the individual parts). It looks like I made one mistake, I got 690 points out of 699.

This part doesn't exist in the DELF/DALF exams, but I think it makes sense to include it, contrary to the popular belief that such knowledge is useless and "theoretical".

Compréhension écrite

The most comfortable part imho, but you can still encounter the "two options could fit" problem. Read the questions well. Overall, I think this part is easy, compared to the DELF/DALF reading tasks. You get very short bits of text, nothing literary or too complex, and answer one question. I think even many C1ish readers on this forum might aim for a very high score, and perhaps even overall B2 learners with the reading habits usual in this community would do very well. If you are B1-C1 and have little time to prepare the TCF, don't "waste time" reading novels, you won't get more than the full score anyways :-) (I got the max score btw)

Expression écrite

The nightmare part. It is very different from the DELF/DALF, it is much faster. Again, you get 3 tasks, probably meant to sort you on the A levels first, then the B levels second, and the C levels third. And I think I really messed up, because 60 minutes for three writing tasks is really not enough imho. I am not fond of such exams, which test speed over quality (and I have always been one of the very fast participants in such exams, so I have no idea how much must the usually slower participants hate this!).

The tasks are also very short, so it is hard to really shine on such a small space. They are also much less clear in the structure. In the DELF/DALF, you are much more clearly told what genre to fit in. A letter, a compte rendu, etc. TCF formulates the tasks differently and I was not too comfortable with that. Plus let's not forget writing is my worst skill in French, I wouldn't be surprised by a bad level. I just hope it will be B2 or better, to satisfy the Swiss government, that's all. Anything better is just for the bragging rights. :-D

Btw I loved the exam being computer based, I dislike handwriting, such tasks require a lot of corrections and changes. And the software was counting the words for me. When it comes to preparation, I'll probably keep complaining about writing being totally underestimated. I've even bought the Expression ecrite books, the B and C levels, I went through all the advice there (btw these books would have been excellent before my DELF and DALF, I recommend them!). Didn't do the exercises for lack of time, but it wouldn't have really mattered, the TCF was very different. The TCF preparation books are mostly about the obligatory exams, I found little info and few examples of the writing tasks, and only one or two model solutions.

1.a message to friends, with an invitation to see some culture thing together, with tons of info demanded on a rather short space (like 40-60 words if I remember correctly). The first problem: what is a "message"? Is it meant to be an old school short letter? Is it supposed to be a fb message? Is it meant to be an sms? Each of these is rather different. And I was writing to two friends, which is also a bit wierd formally. If they are a couple (probable in this case), I usually write to one friend with the "hey, tell your other half this". No clue how this went. Btw always remember: the truth doesn't matter in any language exam. If an accomodation in a castle, eating stuff you're allergic to, and travelling in your space ship fit into your text, just use it. Nobody cares.

2.a blog post about a festival (of anything) that didn't go well for some reasons I was to describe. So basically online complaining. Sounds great for me, doesn't it? :-D Well, not really. I lost a lot of time, because I was trying to be fast. I started with a rock music festival and this idea crumbled under my hands, I simply have too little experience. So, I changed it to a scifi movie festival. And they were asking for an online post, so I was really authentic, I hope it won't be taken wrongly (because they might have wanted the usual cheesy representations of the internet communication, that we find in coursebooks). I complained about last minute program changes, simultaneous showing of the best movies, and the only popcorn offered being the sweet one, etc. I don't know whether a title was required, because they asked for a post, not necessarily a blog article.

3.a very short synthese of two opinions from a magazine, the subject were the advantages and disadvantages of living in the countryside (something I passionately hated :-D ). I was asked to write a short article for some magazine or something, with two parts required. The first one summing up the two opinions within a tiny word limit (around 60 words), the second presenting my own opinion (120-150 words). Really, not much space. This time, I was sure I needed a title :-D At least something was ok. Other than that, it was a mess, I was really late, I had very little time (like 25 minutes out of the 60 for this longest task!), I was already panicking about probably missing my bus by a few minutes, and my wring confidence is also trash.

So, no idea how this went, what will the result be. I've already mentioned some of the few resources on writing. It's obvious that people, who write a lot, will have an advantage. Not sure how will the DELF/DALF books prepare you. Of course any practice is valuable, but the DELF/DALF writing assignments are a bit more strictly defined (which is an advantage, if you get some good resources), and are much more about quality than speed, the required texts are also longer (which makes it easier to make more mistakes, sure, but it also gives you time to show off the stuff like connecteurs logiques without pushing it too unnaturally). But I am not really sure what would be the best way to tackle this. I am simply no expert on French writing.
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Re: TCF first hand experience report

Postby rdearman » Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:36 pm

Cavesa wrote:Plus let's not forget writing is my worst skill in French

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Re: TCF first hand experience report

Postby rpg » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:03 pm

Thanks very much for posting this! I've been thinking about/intending to take the TCF later this year, just for fun, and it's very nice to be able to read your experience with it (especially since I've found surprisingly little discussion of it online). Very useful to read what you think about the oral & written portions as well... after reading your post I think I'll probably do the oral and skip the written one.
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Re: TCF first hand experience report

Postby rdearman » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:17 pm

I do like the fact that you're tested, and they tell you the level instead of you trying to figure it out in advance.
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Re: TCF first hand experience report

Postby lingua » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:31 pm

I also like that the test tells you your level. I've always found it odd that one has to guess which level to take for most of these tests. Having a level for each of the five skills/areas would allow one to better concentrate on weaknesses.
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Cavesa
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Re: TCF first hand experience report

Postby Cavesa » Thu Aug 26, 2021 1:05 pm

Got my final results, waiting for my paper certificate to arrive by post (but I need to travel abroad to that post... at least they are not forcing me to go all the way to Paris). The certificate is dated in the middle of August, but it arrived to the testing center yesterday. This stupid delay (as the certificate is officially meant to arrive within 3 weeks) is causing me problems, as I need to recover it (and hadn't made my travel plans accordingly, as I hadn't known the date) and send it to the Switzerland asap. So, this is a huge flaw. Not respecting the officially communicating delay.

I got my results for the non obligatory parts. Both writing and speaking were graded C2, 18/20. Not sure whether I should feel good about my writing or bad about my speaking :-D Or another explanation is the TCF writing being much easier and less demanding than the DALF writing. (Yeah, might be the imposter syndrome talking as well).

lingua wrote:I also like that the test tells you your level. I've always found it odd that one has to guess which level to take for most of these tests. Having a level for each of the five skills/areas would allow one to better concentrate on weaknesses.


Not sure whether that is such an advantage. I'd say it doesn't really matter to most exam takers, because they need to pass a certain level anyways. For example a fellow candidate, who had been conditionally accepted to a French university, probably couldn't care less about "concentrating on weaknesses", because not getting B2 in every part of this test would be the same thing as failing DELF B2 for her. (But of course I wish for her to have passed everything!!!)

rpg wrote:Thanks very much for posting this! I've been thinking about/intending to take the TCF later this year, just for fun, and it's very nice to be able to read your experience with it (especially since I've found surprisingly little discussion of it online). Very useful to read what you think about the oral & written portions as well... after reading your post I think I'll probably do the oral and skip the written one.


You're welcome, I'm glad to be of help. I totally agree that the two active parts are not discussed enough online, and they also insufficiently treated even in the official preparation resources. If you can afford the whole exam, I think it is worth it. Not sure whether you can just pick one of the non obligatory parts, but perhaps it is possible.
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