TCF Canada expression écrite tâche 2: the letter/article, worked

The TCF Canada writing task 2 asks for an article, a letter or a note addressed to several people, giving an account of an experience - a narrative of roughly 120 to 150 words. But here is the requirement most candidates miss: the narrative is not the point, it is the vehicle. The exam manual asks the account to carry comments, opinions or arguments in service of an objective, such as complaining or making peace. Tell your story perfectly and draw nothing from it, and you have handed in an incomplete text, however clean the French.

So write toward an objective from the start, and reserve your last thirty words for it. Everything here is grounded in the TCF Canada expression écrite section page; the word range and the 60-minute total are the board’s published figures, worth reconfirming on france-education-international.fr before you sit, since these can change.

What structure works for tâche 2?

Four moves, and the last one is the one candidates forget.

• Frame. One or two sentences setting the situation and who you are writing to.
• Facts in order. The events, sequenced, with concrete detail - a number beats an adverb.
• Evaluate. What you make of those facts, not just what happened.
• Objective. The claim, request or reconciliation the whole message was built to reach.

Which tenses does tâche 2 test?

This is the task where tense control has to hold across the whole text. Passé composé carries the events that move the story forward; imparfait paints the background and setting. The classic accident is to open in the passé composé and then slide into the present by the second paragraph. Compare two openings of the same report.

Faible : La réunion commence à 9 heures. Beaucoup de collègues n’étaient pas là. Le directeur a présenté le projet et il dit que rien ne changera.

Forte : La réunion a commencé à 9 heures. Une dizaine de collègues manquaient déjà. Le directeur a présenté le projet, puis il a affirmé que rien ne changerait pour les équipes.

Three tenses that lurched now form a stable spine; beaucoup de collègues becomes une dizaine, a figure worth more than an adverb; reported speech respects the sequence of tenses, so rien ne changera becomes rien ne changerait; and affirmer replaces dire, a shade of meaning the marker credits to your lexical range.

A worked model answer

Prompt: write a note to your team reporting on a meeting that went badly, with the objective of asking for a follow-up decision. A model, near the top of the range:

Chers collègues, la réunion de lundi a commencé à 9 heures, et une dizaine d’entre nous manquaient déjà. Le directeur a présenté le nouveau planning, puis il a affirmé que rien ne changerait pour nos horaires. Or les documents distribués disaient le contraire : deux équipes passeraient au travail du samedi. Personne n’a osé le relever sur le moment, parce que la réunion se terminait déjà. Je trouve cette contradiction gênante, et surtout risquée pour l’organisation de nos gardes d’enfants. Je propose donc que nous demandions une réunion de clarification cette semaine, avant que le planning ne soit affiché. Si vous partagez cet avis, dites-le-moi avant jeudi. Bien à vous, Sonia

Notice the shape. The facts are told in order and in the right tenses, then Je trouve cette contradiction gênante is the evaluation the manual demands, and the final three sentences are pure objective - a specific request with a deadline. That is what turns a diary entry into a task 2.

How is tâche 2 scored, and where do marks leak?

The marking is holistic and per task: two independent markers each assign one CEFR level. The published criteria are linguistic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic, and their relative weight is not published, so treat any source that quotes a weighting as guesswork. What you can reason about is footprint - how much of the text an error damages. The widest-footprint mistakes on this task:

• No objective. A flawless narrative that asks for nothing reads as unfinished against the manual’s own brief.
• Tense collapse. Sliding into the present mid-text undermines the linguistic criterion across whole paragraphs.
• Register mismatch. A note to colleagues written like a letter to a stranger, or vice versa, colours the entire task.
• One idea, many paragraphs - or many ideas, one block. One idea per paragraph, announced then developed, keeps the pragmatic criterion happy.

How much time should tâche 2 get?

There is no official per-task timing - the board publishes only the 60-minute total - but a sensible plan gives task 2 around eighteen minutes, three of them for a four-line plan. The plan is a list of words, not sentences: writing the text twice costs double, and the fair copy on your rough sheet earns nothing. When your self-imposed deadline arrives and the text is not done, finish the sentence in progress, add the closing you know by heart, and move on. A correct, finished 135-word note beats a superb 95-word one that stops under the floor and trips an eliminatory condition. Reconfirm the timing on france-education-international.fr, since exam logistics can change.

Draft to the top of the range, check the count with the word counter, and get at least a few task 2 attempts marked before exam day - the TCF Canada course exists because the one thing free practice cannot give you is a second reader for your own output.