À or de? French prepositions that anglophones get wrong in the exam

À and de are almost empty of meaning on their own, and that is exactly why anglophones get them wrong. There is nothing to translate, so you guess, and the guess is often the English preposition mapped onto a French verb that never asked for it. Je cherche pour un travail feels natural after looking for; French says je cherche un travail, with no preposition at all.

These are low-value errors in meaning and high-value errors in marks. A marker reading j’ai décidé de partir against j’ai décidé à partir sees at once whether the verb patterns are learned or improvised, and improvised patterns keep a fluent text out of the top band.

Why can’t you translate à and de?

Because in most cases they are not carrying meaning; they are grammar that a particular verb, adjective or noun demands. English does the same thing invisibly: you depend on someone, you are interested in something, you are good at something, and none of those prepositions is predictable from logic. French simply has its own set, and the only reliable way to know them is to learn each pattern with its verb.

Which verb patterns must you know cold?

A short list covers most of what you will write in the exam. Learn the verb and its preposition as one unit, never separately.

The third column is where English speakers leak marks most, because the English verb carries a preposition the French one refuses: attendre le bus, not attendre pour le bus; écouter la radio, not écouter à la radio.

What about à and de after adjectives and nouns?

The same fixed-pairing logic runs through adjectives and nouns. Two patterns are worth memorising because they appear constantly in opinion writing:

• c’est + adjectif + de + infinitif for a general statement: il est important de comprendre, c’est difficile de choisir.
• adjectif + à + infinitif when tied to a specific thing: une décision difficile à prendre, un texte facile à lire.

Nouns built with de are a quiet source of errors too: le besoin de, l’envie de, la peur de. Learn the noun with its preposition, the way you should already be learning nouns with their article.

How do à and de work with places?

Place is more rule-governed and therefore more learnable. Cities take à: à Montréal, à Paris. Countries depend on gender: en France and en Italie (feminine), au Canada and au Portugal (masculine), aux États-Unis (plural). Coming from a place uses de: je viens de Montréal, de France, du Canada. These are exam-frequent because the writing tasks so often involve movement, plans or origins.

Which à and de errors show up most in speaking?

Prepositions leak in the oral even faster than in writing, because you have no time to check. Three patterns dominate. The first is dropped contraction: de le and à le must become du and au, and de les and à les become des and aux. Saying je parle de le projet marks you instantly as improvising.

The second is the double construction with an infinitive: j’ai décidé de partir but j’ai commencé à travailler, where the wrong preposition is a very audible slip. The third is possession, where English of becomes French de with no room for à: le livre de mon frère, never le livre à mon frère, which some learners pick up from casual speech but which is marked as incorrect in an exam register.

Because these are automatic under pressure, they respond to drilling rather than to rules. Say the chunk aloud until the wrong version sounds wrong, the same way du pain already sounds right to you without any analysis.

How do you actually learn them?

Not from a rule, because there mostly is not one. Learn them in chunks: store décider de faire as a single block you can produce without thinking, the same way you learned il y a without analysing it. Keep a running list of the pairings you have personally been caught on, since your own errors cluster around a surprisingly small set of verbs.

Be wary, too, of the verbs that change meaning with the preposition, because guessing there changes what you said, not just how correct it sounds. Jouer à is to play a game or sport (jouer au tennis); jouer de is to play an instrument (jouer du piano). Manquer à is to be missed by someone (tu me manques); manquer de is to lack something. These pairs are worth memorising as opposites, since here the preposition carries the whole meaning.

And build a reread pass that looks only at prepositions after verbs and adjectives, because a wrong à or de is invisible while you compose and obvious to a marker. That is the kind of error the marked TCF Canada expression écrite and TEF Canada expression écrite work is built to catch, because a fluent candidate is the least likely to spot it alone. Draft against the word counter and get a text read in the TCF Canada course before you decide your prepositions are exam-ready.