What is a good TEF score?

The TEF (Test d’évaluation de français) isn’t like other French language exams. There is no such thing as a pass or a fail. Instead, examinees score points based on their performance in the exam, and different scores correspond to different levels of proficiency in French. Institutions which recognise the TEF exam will each have their own benchmarks for what they consider a good grade to be.

To find out what a ‘good’ TEF score is, you therefore need to check the requirements of the school, organisation or immigration programme you’re applying to. Unfortunately, these requirements aren’t always quantified in terms of TEF exam points. Often, they are equated with levels of the NCLC (Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadien), or CLB (Canadian language benchmarks) in English, and so it’s helpful to know which levels of the NCLC correspond to different TEF scores.

The table below shows how many points are needed to reach the different levels of the NCLC/CLB, as well as the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).

From the table above, you can work out how many points you will need to score on the TEF to successfully apply for a given programme. For instance, to apply for Canada’s Federal Skilled Trades programme, you will need a NCLC level of 5 in speaking and listening, and a NCLC level of 4 in reading and writing. Using the table above, you can calculate that the points needed to achieve these benchmarks are 226, 181, 121 and 181 respectively.

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