TCF IRN · expression écrite · B2
French citizenship now grades your writing
Since January 2026 naturalisation asks for B2 in French, in writing as well as in speech, and the TCF IRN — an oral-only test until this year — now has a written expression section. Mening sends you one short French writing task a day, corrects it, and keeps a list of the mistakes you repeat.
A task the test could ask tomorrow
Vous ne pourrez pas assister à la réunion de parents d'élèves jeudi. Écrivez un court message à l'enseignante pour l'informer et lui proposer un autre rendez-vous.
Bonjour Madame, je vous écris parce que je ne pourrai pas venir à la réunion de jeudi. Hier j'ai allé je suis allé chez le médecin, et il faut que je fais je fasse des examens la semaine prochaine. Est-ce qu'on peut se voir vendredi matin ?
The trap: Two mistakes examiners see in almost every script: passé composé built with 'avoir' where the verb takes 'être', and the indicative left standing after 'il faut que', which asks for the subjunctive.
What the test asks for — and what Mening sends
The expression écrite is three short texts in 30 minutes, always the same three shapes. Mening's daily prompts rotate through exactly those, at your level.
Task 1 — a short message, 30 to 60 wordsDaily prompts have you write to a neighbour, a teacher, a landlord: a real message with a real occasion, the length the test asks for.
Task 2 — an account of something that happened, 40 to 90 wordsSome days the prompt asks what happened to you: past tenses and agreement, the part of a script that gives a learner away.
Task 3 — your opinion, with reasonsOpinion prompts ask you to take a side and justify it. That structure is what the graders score.
A grader sees your script once. Mening has been counting for weeks.
Subjunctive after 'il faut que'
Aug 2Aug 9Aug 12today
4th time — this is the one to fix
Most learners cycle through the same fifteen or twenty mistakes for years. Mening keeps them on a list, tells you when one comes back, and retires it when you stop making it.
B2 now, and in writingsince 1 January 2026 naturalisation asks for B2 in French both in speech and in writing (décret n° 2025-648). The bar used to be B1, and the written skills were not tested at all.
Three procedures, three levelsA2 for a first multi-year residence permit, B1 for the ten-year carte de résident, B2 for citizenship — plus a civic exam for all three.
The written section is three short textsthe TCF IRN expression écrite is three tasks in 30 minutes: a message of 30–60 words, an account of 40–90, then an opinion with reasons. Exactly the size of one Mening task.
What Mening is not
Not a course, not a mock exam, and not a crammer for the civic test. There is no listening, reading or speaking section here, and nobody times you. Mening trains the one thing the expression écrite grades: whether you can produce short, correct French on demand. It does that by making you write a little of it every day.
One prompt a day, in French, at your level. Corrections that remember you.
Try it free 