Sept jours d'étude. Group classes, book chapters, shadowing practice, vocabulary review. Every hour given a purpose, or left deliberately empty.
A living lexicon. Words encountered in class, in the book, in conversation. Surfaced on a spaced rhythm so nothing slips into oblivion.
A personal grammar reference. Conjugation patterns, rules that finally clicked, corrections from the tutor. Indexed by topic, searched at leisure.
A conversation partner, on demand. Roleplays, corrections, pronunciation drills. Powered by Gemini, shaped by prompts you compose yourself.
This section calls Google's Gemini API directly from your browser. To proceed, you need a free API key from Google AI Studio. The key is stored locally in your browser and never leaves this file.
Twelve months, A1 to B2. A private itinerary toward TCF Canada: book sections, mock exams, unscripted conversations, the small milestones that together make a level.
The map of the year. What each CEFR level means, how TCF Canada is built, the research on how languages are actually learned, and what a week of study should look like at your current stage.
The Common European Framework of Reference organizes language ability into six levels. For TCF Canada and Express Entry, the journey is A1 to B2. B2 is where the +50 CRS points and French-draw eligibility live. Your current level is shown in red.
Four sections, each scored independently on a 0 to 699 scale, converted to NCLC 1 through 12. IRCC uses your lowest section score when determining eligibility, so balance matters more than a single strong section.
| NCLC | CEFR | Listening | Reading | Writing | Speaking |
|---|
Adult language acquisition research converges on a small number of durable findings. The strongest: you learn primarily through comprehensible input, language you can mostly understand that stretches you a little beyond your current level. Output (speaking, writing) forces you to notice gaps and consolidate what input has seeded. Explicit study (grammar drills, vocab lists) is useful but oversold. A practical allocation looks like this.
The evidence base for language acquisition is narrower than most courses suggest. These five principles have robust support and are built into the architecture of this journal. Each links to the tab where you practice it.
Your Amazon 8-in-1 ("Learn French Fast for Adult Beginners") is a reasonable A1 to A2 foundation but runs out of runway before B1. Here is roughly where each typical section sits on the CEFR ladder, and when you should start supplementing with other material.
Generic adult-beginner books all look similar in content. This one gets you to a functional A2 if you work through it carefully, but it will not get you to B2 on its own. Plan to graduate to Quebec-specific input (Radio-Canada, podcasts) and structured B1 materials around month four or five. The group classes with FLS fill in what the book cannot: live output and correction.
External input sources organized by level. Free resources preferred. Quebec French favored over Parisian where possible, since TCF Canada's listening section uses Canadian accents.
How to actually use this. The app alone won't get you there. Here's what works, what to read, where to talk, and the one thing to do today.
Miss one, progress slows. Miss two, it stops.
A short level check, one task per section. Not a real TCF — a temperature reading. Five minutes from start to finish.