How we estimate your score

The exam format

TCF Canada writing lasts 60 minutes and has 3 tasks:

• Task 1: a message, 60 to 120 words.
• Task 2: an article or commented story, 120 to 150 words.
• Task 3: present two documents with opposing views, then take a position, 120 to 180 words: about 40 to 60 words for the two views, then 80 to 120 words for your position.

The format follows France Éducation international’s TCF Canada candidate handbook. Always check its official page before your exam.

Two readings of your text

A first AI model finds the mistakes and suggests a fix for each. A second model reads the text like an examiner, with our grid: language, organisation of ideas and fit for the reader, each placed from A1 to C2. It also sees scored reference texts, to calibrate the grid. These texts were written and scored by an AI (Claude, by Anthropic) for this purpose, and no teacher has checked them yet. No candidate text is sent to Anthropic.

Our grid applies caps: a text that is too short or too long, off topic or memorised, or a task 3 without presenting both documents, cannot go above B1. The exam is stricter: France Éducation international warns that the paper could be rated “A1 non atteint” (below A1) if a task misses the required word count, is off topic or is missing.

From score to NCLC

The score out of 20 is what a candidate would get if all 3 tasks had this quality. We convert it to NCLC with IRCC’s TCF Canada equivalency chart:

Why a range

No TCF Canada text with its official score is public. So we cannot yet measure the gap between our estimate and the real score. So we show a 2-point range. Candidates who share their official score after the exam help us measure this gap. If the average gap is above 2 points, we will remove the score and keep only the corrections.

Between 9 and 11 out of 20, you are near the NCLC 7 line. We say so clearly: it could go either way. We never say you will pass.

Evaluate a text