Français Prep

Free tool

TEF Canada expression orale: Section A question drill

Five minutes, a real advert, about 10 questions, exactly as Section A runs. The drill names the form behind every question you write, shows you what you never thought to ask, and flags the errors a teacher hears every day.

La consigne

Vous avez lu une annonce pour des cours de guitare et vous êtes intéressé(e). Vous téléphonez pour avoir plus d’informations. Posez une dizaine de questions.

COURS DE GUITARE - tous niveaux

Le mercredi, salle municipale, quartier Saint-Roch

Cours collectifs, 8 personnes maximum

Première séance offerte

Renseignements par téléphone

5:00

Five minutes, the length of Section A.

The openers worth knowing by heart

Est-ce qu’il faut … / Est-ce que je dois …

Faut-il réserver, ou est-ce qu’on peut venir directement ?

Quelles sont les conditions pour …

Qu’est-ce qui est compris dans le prix ?

Combien coûte … / Il faut compter combien pour …

À partir de quel âge …

Dans quel cas …

Que se passe-t-il si …

En cas d’annulation, comment …

Y a-t-il un tarif réduit pour …

Pourriez-vous me préciser …

J’aimerais savoir si …

Intonation. Vous avez des places pour jeudi soir ? The word order does not change and the voice carries the question. Commonest in speech, and the one that shows a marker the least grammar.

Est-ce que. Est-ce que vous avez des places pour jeudi soir ? Neutral, correct everywhere, slightly heavy. Your safety net when inversion would trip you.

Inversion. Avez-vous des places pour jeudi soir ? Distinctly more formal, and the one that carries weight in a vouvoiement exchange. Place it deliberately four or five times.

Question word. Quelles sont les conditions d’annulation ? Fronted quel, où, quand, combien, comment. Formal enough for the exchange, and it makes the agreement on quel audible.

Politeness formula. Pourriez-vous me préciser les horaires ? Pushes the grammatical difficulty after the verb, where it becomes an ordinary subordinate clause.

The four scenarios are written in the idiom of the exam rather than copied from any paper, two in the TEF pattern and two in the TCF one. The question forms, the opener bank, the relances and the error list come from the Français Prep speaking lessons. Confirm the current section structure and timing in the official candidate guide: the operator publishes no preparation time for this section, so build your method on reflexes rather than on a pause that may not arrive.

Section A reverses the role your whole preparation has trained. You have spent months answering questions in French. Here the examiner hands you an advert, plays the person on the other end of the phone, and answers only what you actually ask. Silence costs you, because nobody will fill it on your behalf, and your questions decide what the examiner gets to hear: a six-word question can contain more visible grammar than a paragraph of justification.

That creates a trap worth naming. French offers three ways to ask a question, and the one your ear reaches for is the one that shows the least. An intonation question keeps statement word order and lets your voice do the work. Est-ce que is your safety net. Inversion is the formal one, rare in ordinary speech and heavy in a vouvoiement exchange, and a candidate who never produces it has left half their grammar unsampled. So place it on purpose, four or five times, and let intonation carry the rest.

The second thing the drill measures is what you asked about. Sweep the obvious categories once each, then go where almost nobody goes: the exception. « Et si je ne peux pas venir ? », « Que se passe-t-il si … », « En cas d’annulation … ». Those questions are about the case the document does not cover, and they are the reason one set of ten sounds different from the last thirty the examiner has heard.

What the tool cannot do is tell you whether it sounded like French. It reads shapes, not delivery, and no browser will hear the rise at the end of your intonation question flatten into a statement that asks nothing. That is the honest limit of a free drill, and it is the same limit that makes speaking the section you cannot practise alone. The rest of the TEF speaking section and its TCF counterpart set out what an examiner is marking beyond the shape of the sentence.

Questions

About the section a question drill

What is Section A of the TEF Canada speaking test?

You are handed a document, usually a small advert, and told to telephone about it and obtain information. The examiner plays the person answering. It occupies the first five minutes of the fifteen, and the brief asks for about 10 questions. The role is reversed from everything else in your preparation: here you ask and they answer.

Why does this drill care which question form I used?

Because French offers three and they are not interchangeable, and because your ear pushes you towards the one that reveals the least. The intonation question is the commonest in real speech and needs no grammar at all: the words stay in statement order and the voice does the work. Inversion is the one that carries weight in a vouvoiement exchange. In an ordinary conversation you would barely use it; in an exam that is sampling your grammar in fifteen minutes, you should place it deliberately four or five times.

Does the drill mark my French?

No, and it is worth being exact about what it does. It recognises the shape of each question, spots a short list of errors that are mechanical enough to catch reliably, and tells you which subjects you never asked about. It cannot judge whether your question was natural, well pronounced or worth asking. Only a person can, which is rather the point of the section.

Which mistakes does it actually catch?

Four, chosen because they are unambiguous: welding est-ce que onto an inversion, putting quoi at the front of a sentence, slipping into tutoiement in what is a vouvoiement exchange, and writing something that is not marked as a question at all. Those are the ones a teacher hears every day. Subtler faults, like agreement on quel or the difference between qu'est-ce qui and qu'est-ce que, need a reader.

Why does it ask whether I covered the exception?

Because that is what separates one set of ten questions from another. Most candidates sweep price, times and address and stop there, which the examiner has heard all morning. « Et si je ne peux pas venir ? », « En cas d'annulation, comment … », « Que se passe-t-il si … »: these ask about the case the document does not cover, and they are both more interesting to answer and more demanding to build.

Can I prepare questions in advance?

You can prepare machinery, not answers. Openers you can produce without thinking, a handful of relances, two or three ways to buy half a second: those transfer to any document. A memorised list does not, because Section A depends on what the other person says back, and a script collapses at the first unexpected reply.

Is this the same as the TCF speaking test?

Close enough for the drill to be worth doing either way. The TCF Canada runs three tasks rather than two sections, and its second task is also built on you asking the questions. The forms, the register and the habit of asking about the exception are identical. Two of the four scenarios here are written in the TCF idiom for that reason.

Should I type or speak my questions?

Type them the first few times, because seeing the forms laid out is what breaks the habit. After that, say them aloud and type them afterwards from memory. The exam gives you no writing, and a question you can only produce in writing is not yet available to you under pressure.

Keep reading

NEXT STEP

Find out where your French actually stands

Book a short assessment with Adèle: one writing task, one speaking task, and an honest plan for the weeks you have left before the exam.

Book an assessmentSee the course tiers