TEF Canada Writing: Both Tasks, Scoring and a Practice Plan

Section A: continuing a fait divers

You receive the first lines of a news story, typically a local incident, a discovery or an event, and must write the rest in a consistent journalistic style. The markers look for three things. First, continuity: your text must follow logically from the given opening, using the same characters, place and tense (usually the passé composé and imparfait of narrative). Second, structure: a news item answers who, what, where, when, how and why, so a continuation that supplies the missing elements in a sensible order scores well. Third, register: neutral, factual, third person, no opinions and no dialogue unless the opening used it. The most common failure is drifting into a personal story or an opinion piece. The second is tense confusion, especially switching into the present after an opening in the past.

A reliable plan: read the opening twice, list the six journalistic questions and tick which are already answered, then write one short paragraph answering the rest and one closing sentence about consequences or reactions. Count to roughly 80 words; a little over is fine, far under is not.

Section B: the argumentative letter

Section B presents a statement, often as a reader's letter to a newspaper or a proposal, and asks you to react, agree or disagree, and justify your view in about 200 words, usually in the form of a letter or a contribution to a debate. This section carries more weight and tests argument. The expected shape is a short introduction that states the issue and your position, two or three paragraphs each with one argument and a concrete example, a brief acknowledgement of the opposing view, and a conclusion that restates the position. Connectors matter here ("d'une part… d'autre part", "en revanche", "par conséquent") but they must be varied and correctly used; a text that begins every sentence with "de plus" reads as mechanical.

Register is formal: "vous", no contractions of speech, no slang. If the task frames it as a letter, include an appropriate opening and closing formula. Marks are lost most often for texts that describe the problem at length and argue briefly, and for positions that are not clearly stated until the final line.

Scoring and NCLC mapping

Each section is marked by trained assessors on criteria covering task fulfilment, coherence and structure, vocabulary range and accuracy, and grammar and spelling. The two sections combine into a single writing score on the TEF scale, which is then mapped to an NCLC level. For Canadian immigration what matters is the NCLC level per skill, not the raw score: NCLC 7 in all four skills is the threshold for the Express Entry French-language proficiency category and for most provincial streams that reward French, and higher levels add points. Because the raw-score bands are revised from time to time, check the current mapping on the official site and use the TCF/TEF to CLB converter to see where a practice score lands.

Common errors by candidate background

Both groups lose marks for the same structural reason: not planning. Two minutes of outline before each section prevents most of the errors in the table.

A four-week plan

1. Week 1, Section A only. One continuation a day from real short news items, 15 minutes each, checked for tense consistency and the six questions. Build a list of ten narrative verbs and ten journalistic phrases.
2. Week 2, Section B structure. One argued text a day, 35 minutes, from statements on everyday Canadian topics (transport, housing, work, education). Check that the position appears in the introduction and that each paragraph has one argument and one example.
3. Week 3, accuracy. Keep writing both sections daily but spend the review time on a personal error log: agreements, homophones, anglicisms, connector misuse. Rewrite one text from week 2 with the log beside you.
4. Week 4, timed pairs. Section A and Section B together in 60 minutes, every other day, under test conditions. Compare with week 2 texts for length, structure and error count.

Practise with Langujet

Langujet's TEF Canada preparation gives AI feedback on your writing and speaking tasks covering structure, grammar, vocabulary and fluency, alongside practice for the listening and reading sections, which is the daily loop weeks 1 to 3 need. The French exams for Canada immigration page explains which test and level each immigration route asks for, and the French exams hub compares TEF Canada with TCF Canada, DELF and DALF if you have not yet chosen.