You don’t have to score 100%. The pass rate for TCF is something like 14/20.
But to provide a few facts.
There is no test for WARP cards or renewing one year visitor visa - which one can do indefinitely.
A language test only applies when applying for a long-term visa, a Carte de résident de longue durée-UE, for under 65’s.
And Directive 2003/109/ec, Article 5 allows member states to set integration conditions.
Argh I must of misunderstood your post. Incidentally I will steer clear of an English test; it is progressively getting worse.
Must have or must’ve. Not “must of”.
But otherwise your English is brilliant. Would that my French were so good.
It’s not a straightforward as that. A spoken test would b probably be easier for a native speaker than a written test where all the details need to correct. Hopefully all French adults would be able to say that they are going to eat but there will be quite a few who actually find know if manger is spelled with an er or an é. A immigrant preparing for a language exam leading to citizenship would be expected to have learned the correct phrase, learned the correct spelling and know why they would use that spelling in that situation. You only have to look at the standard of written English used on a lot of forums or FB pages to see the level of you typical English speaker. The bar needs to be set at a respectable but achievable level but that level might well be above that achievable by a lot of native speakers. The immigrant would be expected to invest time working to a syllabus with the exam at the end. Your average man or woman on the street stopped doing that when they left school. As I said before I would have failed the ‘Being British’ test that a close friend was expected to pass when she applied for British nationality. The test was a mixture of general knowledge and historical facts and dates. All the correct answers were given in the booklet that the applicants had been given. A few minutes with that and the test became straightforward, without even that basic preparation most British citizens would have struggled.
I might be biased because I believe that the language tests should be challenging but I’m also amazed by the number of British people I’ve met who probably wouldn’t achieve A2 despite living in France for years. I’ve yet to meet any adult who has just learned a second language by being there, for most it requires a fair bit of education, repetition and commitment.
Forget all the language tests, most of you have lived here for many years. You’re not going anywhere. Post Brexit, anyone wanting to work here has to speak French, new rules. Fair enough. Anyone who can afford to support themselves both financially and medically need not worry. France doesn’t want a financial burden, why would they?
Things rarely are 
I’d agree wholeheartedly with you if we were talking about C1/2 but we’re talking about B1 (soon to be B2).
Well, yes but we were talking about the typical native French speaker.
The reading age required to comprehend “The Sun” is 8 - I’m not even sure that counts as literate
In fact I searched for the definition of literate which is used to define literacy rates and the answer as defined by UNESCO seems to be:
Which is a bit vague - B1/2 probably fit
I suppose the real take home here is that CEFR levels are not good tools to test native speakers. Which is not surprising as they were not designed to do that.
I’m sure it used to be 9. 
Their standards must be slipping.
If you could call them standards.
It could be that 8 year olds are getting better at reading, of course.
Let’s not get into how reading ages are calculated. It’s a black art which has several different ways to skin a cat. If at first you don’t get the age that you were hoping for try a few different tests until you do. Then there’s reading and reading comprehension. I can read quite well in German because it’s a phonetic language but my comprehension score would be embarrassingly low. In French it would be the other way around, my pronunciation would be awful but my comprehension quite good. Strangely with primary aged children girls are often the more accurate when reading a text aloud but boys can have better comprehension skills. That of course a generalisation in a situation where in a class of 8 year olds the reading ages may well range from 5 years to 13.
I’m lucky as I will never have to take a language assessment. My aim has always been to be able to communicate as well as I can manage and I am just about where I want to be. In the past week I’ve had to deal with a fairly complicated medical appointment, a garage, a sailmaker, several phone calls, ordering food, choosing new glasses and a funeral and seem to have coped. An exam could bring the confidence I’ve gained crashing down.
That brings us to a whole other dimension - some people are just not very good at formal exams for all sorts of reasons with the result that exams always measure in at least some part how good the candidate is at taking that particular type of exam, rather than how well the candidate knows the subject matter - confidence often being a big part of the equation.
Quite how you deal with that fairly in a language assessment for citizenship I’m not sure.
Probably in a similar way to IQ, by putting someone through a battery of tests which purport to measure one thing and in fact do something else entirely.
I know the U.K. tests inside out it’s the random way that an age is attributed that’s the black magic bit.
The worst test I’ve ever experienced came, I think, right at the start of the last Conservative government’s reign. The incoming education secretary had read some research on teaching phonics and decided that that was the way that huge progress was going to be made during his time in charge. He told early years teachers that they were going to have to start teaching phonics. He was told than in most schools phonics was already being used as one of a number of approaches to early reading. That was ignored and his phonics policy was introduced.
As testing was king and they needed a baseline to prove improvement all English and Welsh pupils were to be tested at the end of Year 1.
A completely new test was provided where the children were given a bit of paper and were asked to read what was on the card. The rules stated that the test should be done cold and no briefing, help or hints were to be given. The cards had three, four, five or six letters on them some real words but others nothing but random letters. The weaker readers found the task straightforward as they relied on phonics and sounded out the individual letters and possibly realised the real words and stated them at the end. The slightly better readers upped the game a bit and not only sounded the individual letters phonetically but recognised the blends like th, ch or fr and sounded them correctly. They would also have been able state most of the simple real words. Then came the good readers. They looked at the gobblegook and said, that’s not a real word. Some would try reading phonetically but give up when they realised it wasn’t a word they knew. If the saw a familiar word one that was in their sight vocabulary they would simply read it without trying to sound it out phonetically. That was a fail. They could read the word correctly but the rules they didn’t know said that they had to use phonics. The best readers of all would look at an odd collection of letters and make comments like, this cards is wrong, cats has an s at the end not a z, that too was a fail.
I spoke to a Year 1 teacher who was devastated because her class of good readers had scored so badly. Her headteacher demanded an explanation but was more interested in insisting that the government’s guidelines were followed that accepting that the system was flawed.
To make matters worse the results were published in local league tables. We casually asked one of the teachers whose class had done well how her class had done so well. She readily admitted that she had ignored the instructions and explained that the words, real words or not had to be read phonetically.
It was a real world example of how government ministers with no knowledge or understanding of their brief can cause chaos at the grass roots even when they are being advised by independent advisors.
I don’t actually know if the same tests were carried out in subsequent years but if they were the idea of reading by using phonics even when they weren’t necessary would have been introduced in the classroom so the tests could have been carried out following the instructions to the letter.
If people have serious problems like recognised dyslexia that can get exemption from the exam, and some problems can ask for adjustments. But there is no exemption from the interview and that is the most important element. People who have necessary qualification have had citizenship denied as they could not communicate in French.
I think that the inclusion of a written element in the language test is a bit old fashioned these days. When I need to write in French I use an online translation tool to do so. It’s faster and more accurate and means that I can express substantially more detail than would otherwise be the case.
The more relevant element is surely a face to face real life situation where the most important thing is the level of communication achieved rather than the technical virtues of a particular tense.
As for reading French, it’s possible these days to just take a photo and have the app translate it for you.
Perhaps a more effective measure to ensure accurate communication between locals and foreigners would be to require the latter to carry a smartphone, have the relevant apps loaded into it, and be able to demonstrate that they know how to use them.
A smartphone is a tool, so why not use it ?
I think we may be, inevitably as foreigners in France, somewhat missing seeing the greater picture.
The point of requiring foreigners wishing to acquire permanent residency in France is to ensure they fit into French culture and society, not exist in their own world on the margins. Learning a language not only by extension teaches much about culture and social expectations but it also renders the learner much more able to communicate and integrate within French society. Learning the many ways of French choices leads to understanding the whys.
Understanding and integrating into the society of France is the true intention behind requiring would-be immigrants to learn French to a competent level. This is especially important sociologically to avoid creating ‘third culture’ pockets that create tension with the indigenous population. Bridging the language barrier is a crucial step towards social integration.
I realise, and likely the government does too, that French language competency may not be possible for the 65+, so they have been exempted. Indeed, there are more than you may imagine living in England within entirely non-English speaking communities who manage perfectly well with family and community support. However, to my mind it seems rather an imprisoned existence but perhaps from their perspective it is safe.
I fully agree, the primary driver is integration. I would go further and add one further point, the 65+ limit on testing should not be an excuse for not learning the language
Mmmm that was just the draft version of my post. Not sure what went wrong…apologies.
I have friends who arrived just before the deadline and are in receipt of the 5 year WA card. I am wondering if they will need to prove language when applying for the 10 year WA card when the time comes. Both are late 70’s and (regretfully) still have very poor French.
I wouldn’t have thought so Stella. If they are already in posessionof a five-year card, they would not have been given that if they were unsuitable and as you say, they arrived before the tightening up of applications happened. I have not seen anything to the contrary about any language tests for already resident, only those applying now it may be necessary to proove a little understanding. There must be thousands of brits who have never bothered to learn much french here.
No. WARP card holders are exempt from language tests.
(I gave the facts in post 20 above)