Les erreurs fréquentes

Common mistakes to avoid

At B2 level, the difference between a solid score and a great one is rarely your range of vocabulary; it is the small, repeated errors that quietly lower your impression of accuracy. The good news is that the most damaging mistakes are predictable, which means you can learn to spot and correct them yourself before they cost you points. This lesson lists the errors that examiners see most often on the TEF Canada and the TCF Canada, and shows how to self-correct under time pressure.

The usual suspects

Most recurring errors fall into a few families: gender and agreement, prepositions after verbs, the choice of auxiliary and past participle agreement, false friends, and register slips (mixing spoken shortcuts into a formal answer). Knowing the family an error belongs to helps you predict where you are likely to slip and check those exact spots.

Errors that cost the most

Some mistakes barely register with a listener, while others break the sentence. The constructions below are high-frequency at B2 and worth memorising as fixed patterns: se souvenir de, il s'agit de, the contrast between an and année, and the agreement of the past participle with a preceding direct object.

Self-correcting on the fly

In the speaking section you cannot erase, so the skill is to repair smoothly. A short reformulation signals control rather than weakness: pause, flag the fix, and restate cleanly. In writing, keep ninety seconds at the end to reread, hunting specifically for your own known weak spots (agreements, accents, prepositions) instead of rereading for meaning, which your brain already approves of.

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