Course

How to use the calendar

Your daily instructions from Thursday 5 November to Wednesday 30 December 2026. The target is NCLC 7 in all four skills on TCF Canada: listening 458, reading 453, writing 10/20 and speaking 10/20. Writing and speaking are trained for 12/20, because no re-marking is available. TEF Canada is the hedge, decided at the first full mock on Day 21.

Everything comes in the order the real exams reward: what recurs most and pays most comes first (exam-analysis.md §3). The IDs (W1-01, S2-05, LR-P1, TV5-04, INF-L27, SET-W03 and so on) come from the kits in templates/ and voice-mode/.

Your sitting date. This calendar assumes you sit after Day 56. If you book an earlier sitting, for example Saturday 12 December (Day 38) or Wednesday 16 December (Day 42), tell Claude the date, paste this file and your tracker, and ask it to re-time the remaining days. Whatever the date, the last five days before it follow "Final 5 days before your sitting", near the end.

The FEI rule. Reproducing memorised texts counts as fraud. Learn frames and phrase sets, and adapt them every time. Any model answer in the kits, or from Claude, is a study model, not a script: read it, close it, then write or say your own.

The day

Each day has seven blocks. Their minutes add up to about 7½ to 8 hours; with short breaks, that is your 8-hour day. Day 1 adds a setup block, and a few days add a 10-minute booking task.

• Do the blocks in any order, with listening and speaking when you are freshest. On mock days, sit the papers first, in exam order: listening, reading, writing, then speaking.
• Reading the IDs: Q1–10 or Q20–29 are question numbers in the 39-question papers. "TV5-04 CO positions 5–7" means items 5 to 7 of the listening part (CO) of TV5MONDE series 4; CE is the reading part. INF-L12 and INF-R12 are InfinLume listening and reading paper 12 (open them from the InfinLume library; drills in review mode, mocks in exam mode). LR-P1 to LR-P6 are the drill protocols and LR-T1 to LR-T10 the word tables; the listening-reading kit's ID index lists every source. TV5 listening has no transcript: where a day says "the transcript" for a TV5 clip, replay the clip up to three times after answering and write down the sentence that holds the answer (LR-P1 step 6).

Priority labels

• A: never skip. On a bad day, shorten an A block instead: reviews only, or one drill instead of three.
• B: the first block to drop on a short day.
• C: the next to drop. The C block is always Review.
• From Day 8 to Day 54 every block except Review is A. The rule after each mock (Tracker) says where moved minutes come from.

Words: Anki and tags

Once, on Day 1 (about 40 minutes):

1. Install Anki on your computer from apps.ankiweb.net. On your phone use AnkiDroid or AnkiMobile, and sync them with a free AnkiWeb account.
2. Make one note type. Tools → Manage Note Types → Add → "Add: Basic", named TCF. In Fields, rename Front to French and Back to English, then add Rank, Type, Example FR, Example EN and Exam note. In Cards, set the front template to {{French}} and the back to {{FrontSide}}<hr id=answer>{{English}}<br>{{Example FR}}<br>{{Example EN}}<br>{{Exam note}}.
3. Create a deck called TCF.
4. File → Import, one file at a time from vocab/: core-0001-0250.tsv, core-0251-0500.tsv, core-0501-0750.tsv, core-0751-1000.tsv, core-1001-1250.tsv, core-1251-1500.tsv, exam-essentials.tsv and themes.tsv. Choose note type TCF and deck TCF; check that each column goes to the field with the same name and the Tags column to Tags; set the option for existing notes to Duplicate, because 43 words sit in both a core deck and the essentials deck and you want both cards. Don't import master-list-ranked.tsv: it is the word list, not cards.
5. TCF deck → Options: New cards/day 0 (new cards reach you only through the Today deck), Maximum reviews/day 9999. Then Browse, search tag:skip, select all, and Suspend: the deck builders marked these few cards as not worth learning.

Every day:

• The Words line gives a search, for example is:new -tag:skip (tag:day08 or tag:theme03). A day tag (day01–day42) brings that day's core words and any exam-essentials group due that day. A theme tag (theme01, theme03–theme21) brings a theme pack on the day one of its prompts first comes up; theme24 is TEF-only (vocab/README.md).
• Tools → Create Filtered Deck: name it Today, paste the search, limit 300, cards selected by "Order added", and "Reschedule cards based on my answers in this deck" ticked. Build. On later days, open Today's options, paste the new search and Rebuild.
• Study Today until it is empty, then the TCF deck for your reviews.
• Missed a day? Put both tags in the brackets: is:new -tag:skip (tag:day05 or tag:day06).
• From week 2, some days name cards to refresh, and weeks 7–8 have no new words. For a refresh, make a second filtered deck, Refresh, with "Reschedule cards based on my answers in this deck" unticked, so cramming doesn't upset your review schedule; paste the named search and Rebuild. Say each card aloud.
• The rank ranges in the Words lines are a guide: a word at the edge of a range can carry the next day's tag. Study by tag.

Writing: getting it corrected

• Find the prompt by ID in writing-tcf.md: W1-xx in §1.2, W2-xx in §1.3, W3-xx in §1.4 with its two documents in §1.5, whole sets SET-Wxx in §1.6, and set-only codes such as a19 or c27 in §1.7. The frames (W-T1A to W-T3) are in §3, and the Task 3 argument banks in §4.
• Read the frame and its phrase bank, close any study model, and write from the prompt. Change names, details, numbers and the order of points every time (§2.5).
• Count words the TCF way (anything between two spaces is a word), stay 10 words inside each range, and run the self-check (§2.6).
• Paste to Claude for correction: open a new chat (not the TCF Examiner project), paste the prompt in writing-tcf.md §5, fill in TASK, PROMPT ID, WEEK, TIME and PAPER OR TYPED, and paste the French prompt (for Task 3, both documents) and your text exactly as written. Do the drill it gives you, close its improved version, and rewrite your text from the prompt. Copy the error table and the top 3 fixes into the error log.
• Days marked "on paper" (Sundays and mock days) are handwritten: a paper sitting is slower than typing (§2.2).

Speaking: voice mode

• Set it up once, on Day 1, with voice-mode/README.md §1.
• Each session: open the TCF Examiner project, start a new chat, type the day's session line exactly as printed, and send it. If yesterday's FEEDBACK gave you a drill, add it at the end: | focus: …. Read Claude's short plan, switch on voice mode and say « On commence ». When a block prints two lines, run them as two sessions: a new chat for each line, in the order printed, each with its own FEEDBACK and LOG line. DRILL lines in the Listening block are separate chats too.
• Run the timer yourself (T1 2:00; T2 2:00 of preparation, then 3:30; T3 4:30) and say « temps » when it rings (README §3). At the end, leave voice mode, type FEEDBACK, and copy the LOG line into the error log.
• COACH teaches step by step (weeks 1–3, and later for new T3 questions). EXAMINER is the strict test, in French only (from week 3, plus the Day 14 diagnostic). DRILL runs the listening drills VL-01 to VL-04 in the same project; the Listening block gives their lines.
• Before a card or question you haven't done, read it in speaking-tcf.md (T1 cards §3.2, T2 cards §4.1–4.5, T3 frames §5.1–5.2, idea banks §5.3–5.5). Take ideas and phrases from it, never a whole answer.
• Drill levels: the line gives one. If your last two rounds of that drill were 80% or better, go up a level (listening-reading-tcf.md §6).
• REC, once a week (Days 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49 and 56): record yourself and compare with native audio (README §6). It is part of that day's Speaking minutes.

The error log

Keep one notebook or spreadsheet, in four sections:

1. Listening and reading: a row for every miss and every lucky guess, in LR-P6's columns: item ID, band, what you chose and the key, the code (traps E, S, R, U, P, C, O, W; causes V, H, Q, X), the words that tricked you, the rule in your words, and the date you re-tested it.
2. Writing: the rows of Claude's error table and its top 3 fixes, with the prompt ID.
3. Speaking: each session's LOG line and top 5 errors.
4. Mocks: the tracker at the end of this file.

In the Review block, log the day, then re-test 5–10 older rows (redo the item, or say the corrected sentence aloud) and date them. At the end of each week (Days 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49 and 56): count the LR-P6 codes and add next week's extra drill from LR-P6's weekly table; find your weakest speaking task in the LOG lines (README §8); count your writing error types. An error that comes back three times becomes your focus: and a grammar block. To drill corrected sentences in Anki, add them to the TCF deck with the tag mine and put or tag:mine inside the brackets of the day's search.

Day 1 setup

1. Anki and the decks: above.
2. Voice mode: README §1. Create the TCF Examiner project, paste project-instructions.md, and run the first-day check with Jour 1 | COACH | S1-01, which is also Day 1's speaking session. Get a timer (a second device is best), paper and a pen.
3. Seats: read exam-analysis.md §1.4. On 4 November no TCF Canada date between 8 December and 31 January showed open seats at the centres checked, so book what you can, put the dates below in your phone's calendar, and search LFA's session finder and FEI's centre map by hand for the centres nobody checked. Once you have a date, tell Claude.
4. The free rules, which need no French. Learn them today:
   1. Never leave a multiple-choice question blank. Wrong answers cost nothing, and guessing alone is worth about 72 points per paper on Q30–39.
   2. Stay inside every writing word range (T1 60–120, T2 120–150, T3 120–180 in two parts of 40–60 and 80–120) and do the tasks in order. Going outside a range can sink the whole paper.
   3. Learn frames and phrases, never whole texts.
   4. In speaking, ask the examiner to repeat or rephrase whenever you need: « Pourriez-vous répéter, s'il vous plaît ? »

Booking dates (exam-analysis.md §1.4)