How the TCF Canada score is calculated

The TCF Canada score often surprises candidates: two people who answered the same number of questions correctly can get very different results. It all comes down to the scoring scale, which rewards difficult questions far more than easy ones.

Two kinds of marks

The TCF Canada assesses four skills, marked in two ways:

• Listening Comprehension (compréhension orale) and Reading Comprehension (compréhension écrite) are scored out of 699 points;
• Written Expression (expression écrite) and Oral Expression (expression orale) are marked out of 20.

Each mark is then converted into an NCLC level by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, skill by skill.

A step-by-step scale in comprehension

The 39 comprehension questions are ordered from the easiest to the hardest, from A1 to C2. The harder the question, the more it is worth:

Questions 20 to 39 alone are worth almost 70% of the points. A correct answer at C2 is worth eleven times a correct answer at A1.

No negative points

A wrong or missing answer is simply worth 0 points. So there is no reason to leave a question unanswered: even guessing, you have a one-in-four chance of scoring.

From score to NCLC

Each score is converted into an NCLC with an official table. For example, in Reading Comprehension, you need at least 453 points to reach NCLC 7 and 499 for NCLC 8. The Listening Comprehension thresholds are slightly different.

In expression, the mark out of 20 follows another scale: 10 or 11 out of 20 correspond to NCLC 7, 12 or 13 to NCLC 8.

Your overall level is that of your weakest skill. An excellent Reading Comprehension score does not make up for weaker Oral Expression.

What this means for your practice

Aiming for the easy questions is not enough: it is by improving on B2 and C1 questions that you gain the most points. Practise with full sets, then look at your success rate by level to know where to focus your efforts.