September 19th, 2019 

Hello there, everybody!
How are you doing? I hope the year has been treating you well!

What are we talking about today?

As you may know already, I am studying in order to be teaching in the province of Quebec, which is an officially bilingual province in Canada. In order to teach in French school boards, they will unofficially be asking for you to have some kind of mastery of the French language.

Here in Montreal, there are two tests future English teachers can take to be qualified to teach in the school boards: the SEL [Service d’Évaluation Linguistique] and the TECFEE [Test de Certification en Français Écrit pour l’Enseignement] given by the CÉFRANC [Centre d’Évaluation du Rendement en Français Écrit]. It is pretty similar to the EETC [English Exam for Teacher Certification] that English teachers must pass in order to obtain their teaching license, whether you study at McGill, Concordia, UdeM or UQAM.

The former is easier and the latter is fairly difficult (from my memory). A friend of mine had an interview at a French school board and told me she felt that the school board would have preferred her to succeed the TECFEE than the SEL.

The Marguerite-Bourgeoys School Board (CSMB, Commission Scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys), for example, demands the SEL, according to the website.

Here is more information about the exam from UQAM and here is more information from University of Laval about it.

How do I prepare for it?

There are two or three ways to prepare for the exams.

Study at Home

You can self-study the language! I think it’s not that hard, especially if you’ve been paying attention in your grammar classes and have scored high grades in French composition in high school. Here are a few resources that I would use to prepare for it:

• TELUQ – Institut Jacques-Couture (for the SEL) Here is the link.
  • They have a few documents that will help you prepare and auto-evaluate for the exam.
• CCDMD is an absolute favourite of mine. Here is the link.
  • They teach and they give so many exercises.
• Cyberprof has a bunch of exams and tests you could take. Here is the link.
• Reverso has a bunch of exercises you can take. Here is the link.
• CEFRANC also offers a bunch of guides to prepare. Here is the link.
• The BANQ also has a bunch of books like this one, which can help you out.

Study in a School

A few universities prepare future teachers for this particular test. As far as I know, Concordia University does not, but in our program, I believe you are allowed French electives, and taking a French class in another university could potentially be possible! Please do make sure it’s okay with the director of your program, though!

• TELUQ – Institut Jacques-Couture Here is the link
  • They offer classes to help you prepare. They even have a location here in Montreal.
• Centre Pauline-Julien also offers classes for SEL and TECFEE
  • Here is their link.
• University of Montreal has two classes:
  • DID 1010T – Français écrit pour futurs enseignants [you can find the information here]
  • DID 10101 – Français écrit pour enseignants 1 [you can find the information here]
• University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) also seems to have a few classes:
  • DDL6000 – Le soutien en français écrit dans l’enseignement [you can find the information here]
  • LIN1112 – Apprentissage de la grammaire du français écrit pour enseignants et enseignantes [you can find the information here] – as of the writing of this post, this class is inactive, I’m only putting it here in case it ever comes back as active in the future, when you’re reading this. 

When do I take the exam?

• SEL 
  • Here is the PDF of the calendar according to the TELUQ. It is from 2019, but hopefully they will have updated it for future dates by the time this post reaches you.
• TECFEE
  • I think that University of Montreal gives out the TECFEE exam thrice per year. I’ve found the information here, but it will be outdated by the time this post comes out, and maybe by the time you’ve read this. 

I really hope this was helpful!
You have a nice day and start preparing for your tests!
Good luck in your studies!
PV