Section A · 25 minutes · at least 80 words
Section A practice: a tech company moves into a village station
A software company rents the old train station of a village of 900 people, and its first employees arrive on Monday. Your job is to write what happens next, as the rest of the news article. This is a work topic with a twist: the story is about a village, not an office.
The task
Lisez le début de cet article, puis rédigez-en la suite (80 mots minimum). Racontez ce qui s'est passé ensuite, dans un style journalistique, en plusieurs paragraphes.
« Des informaticiens s'installent dans l'ancienne gare de Saint-Léandre-du-Lac »
Faute de place dans ses locaux du centre-ville, une jeune entreprise de logiciels a choisi une solution inattendue : louer l'ancienne gare de Saint-Léandre-du-Lac, un village de 900 habitants, pour y installer une partie de ses employés. Les premiers sont arrivés lundi, et leur présence ne passe pas inaperçue…
Original practice task written by Allez7, not an official TEF item.
Write your own answer and grade itOpens the free grader with this task selected.
How to tackle it
A plan
Paragraph 1: the arrival
Start where the article stops: the first day. Who is there to welcome the employees, and what happens? One or two concrete facts (a number, a name, a gesture).
Paragraph 2: the effects
Show how the village changes: a local business, the main street, a resident quoted in direct speech. A short quote makes the article sound like a real newspaper.
Paragraph 3: a problem
A news story needs tension. Some residents complain: parking, noise, house prices. This is what keeps the story from being a list of good news.
Paragraph 4: the response
End with what the company or the town does about it, and one last fact that closes the story.
Tenses and register
- Past tenses for the events (passé composé) and the background (imparfait): « attendaient », « ont été accueillis ».
- Present tense for the current situation: « le casse-croûte vend maintenant… ».
- A neutral news register: third person, no « je », no opinion of your own.
- Reporting verbs around quotes: « dit la propriétaire », « explique le maire ».
Traps that cost points
On this task
Don't turn the article into an opinion about remote work. The task is a news story: if you start arguing for or against working from the countryside, you are writing the wrong type of text.
- Write the rest of the news story. An opinion, a letter or a comment on the topic is the wrong type of text, and it caps the task and coherence scores.
- Don't retell the start of the article. Any run of 5 or more words taken from the task doesn't count towards your 80 words, and an answer that mostly restates the task earns almost nothing.
- Write at least 80 words of your own. Under 72 words, the task score loses a point; under 40, the result drops to the lowest band.
- Stay on the story the article sets up. Writing about the theme but missing the event it announces counts as partly off topic.
These are the rules the Allez7 grader applies in code. The TEF does not publish its length rule; the grader follows DELF practice.
Topic vocabulary
| French | Meaning |
|---|---|
| une entreprise de logiciels | a software company |
| les nouveaux venus | the newcomers |
| accueillir | to welcome |
| un casse-croûte | a snack bar (Quebec) |
| se plaindre de… | to complain about… |
| la hausse des loyers | the rise in rents |
| un stationnement | a car park (Quebec) |
| un stage d'été | a summer internship |
Sample answer
Written to show NCLC 7 features. The errors are kept on purpose: an NCLC 7 text is not error-free, and the notes say which ones matter.
Sample at NCLC 7
Le premier matin, dix personnes du village attendaient devant l'ancienne gare pour voir les nouveaux employés. Les douze informaticiens de l'entreprise Pixelnord ont été accueilli par le maire, qui leur a donné un panier de produits locaux.
Leur arrivée a changé beaucoup de choses dans le village. Le casse-croûte, qui voulait fermer à l'automne, vend maintenant quinze repas de plus chaque midi. « Ils commandent tous des poutines, mais ils sont très gentils », dit la propriétaire en riant.
Mais tout le monde est pas content. Quelques résidents se plaignent des voitures qui sont stationné sur la rue de la Gare et du bruit des camions qui livre le matériel. D'autres ont peur que le prix des maisons va augmenter si l'entreprise grandit.
Pour ça, la direction a promis de faire un stationnement derrière la gare. Elle propose aussi un stage d'été en informatique pour les jeunes du village. Trois élèves de l'école secondaire se sont déjà inscrit.
Allez7 grader, 3 runs: NCLC 7, 7–8, 7–8. A range such as 7–8 means NCLC 7 is reached and 8 is within the grader's margin; a range counts as its lower band. Levelled on October 12, 2026 by the Allez7 grader (an AI-assisted estimate), not by a TEF examiner.
Write your own answer and grade itMore writing tasks
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- Section B practice: better to rent all your life than to buy?
A financial adviser says renting beats buying. Write to the newspaper.
All tasks and sample answers are original practice material written by Allez7. They are not official TEF items and do not reproduce any exam.