My examiner gave me a clue. The new exam won't.

Same name as the queen of England

A few years ago I sat down in a préfecture for my naturalization interview. At some point the agent asked me who the Prime Minister was, and when I didn't come up with it, I got a clue: "same name as the queen of England." I for some reason hadn't considered preparing for that question!

Élisabeth. As in Élisabeth Borne. I got there.

“A transcript doesn't know you froze for ten seconds before you answered.”

There were questions about French authors too, which felt a bit odd. But it was a conversation, with a person who could see I was trying, and that person helped me along.

Nobody is giving you clues now

The process has changed since then. There's now a civic exam on a tablet: 40 multiple-choice questions in 45 minutes, and you need 32 right. A tablet has never heard of the queen of England.

You also still have the interview, with a person, and you need B2 French on top of that. So when we started building practice for this, we were really building for two different tests. I suspect the interviewer will be as kind as they were with me. I guess it will depend who you land on.

The quiz is the easy part to practice

The ministry publishes its question list, and says you don't need paid prep. For the quiz, I think they're mostly right. So our practice is free, up to 10 questions a day, and it comes from that official list. "Can you publicly burn a French flag?" is a real one. So is "How long is paternity leave?"

What we added is a check. Every question goes to a certified French tutor, who has to answer it blind before they can judge it. If a tutor gets it wrong, the question comes to me.

Out of the first 110 questions, the tutors missed 8. On paternity leave, one of them picked the old answer from before the law changed. These are French teachers. That tells you something about this exam.

Practice has hints, because I remember how much one helped. The real exam has none, so don't get attached. We haven't built a full timed version yet.

The interview is a different animal

You can't memorize your way through an interview, so this is where we spent our time. Nobody publishes an official script, and we don't pretend to have one. What we built follows the official documents, the livret du citoyen and the charte, and it runs 30 minutes in the shape you should expect: who you are, how you got here, why you want this, then values, institutions, rights and duties.

The questions look simple. The follow-ups are where it gets interesting. "What is laïcité?" is easy enough to recite. Then the coach asks whether someone working at the town hall can wear a religious symbol. And someone just visiting the town hall? Or: "If your daughter wants to study far from home, what do you think about that?" There's no multiple-choice answer to that one.

And then: "Why do you want to become French?" Try saying that out loud, in French, to someone who is waiting for you to finish.

Why there's a real tutor in the room

You can buy an AI interview simulator for a few euros, and for repetition they're probably fine. We use AI too: with your consent the session is transcribed, and an AI gives the coach a second opinion afterward. The coach can ignore it, and sometimes should. A transcript doesn't know you froze for ten seconds before you answered.

A person notices that. A person hears when you've recited something from a website, and asks the next question because of it. A person can also slow down when you're lost, which is more or less what that agent did for me.

Our coaches are French teachers already certified on imchatty, and to earn the title they have to interview me first. I play the candidate. I don't have to act very much. You see their profile before you book, and you choose, because after ten years of matching tutors and students I still think the match matters more than the method.

Afterward the coach fills in a result sheet: Prêt, Presque prêt or À travailler for values and institutions, for your personal story, and for your French, with up to three things to fix. You get it within 24 hours. I read every sheet before it goes out. If it's late, you choose between a free redo and a refund.

It's practice, and we say so everywhere. We have no connection to any préfecture, the coach will never pretend to be an agent, and the sheet has no official value. Transcripts are deleted after 30 days.

More of these are coming

This is the first of a kind of product I want to do more of: a speaking test evaluated by someone who knows the exam. Spend ten minutes on the TCF forums and you'll see why. Speaking is where people get stuck, and where they trust a machine's score the least.

So more are rolling out, with the same recipe. Follow the real test as closely as we honestly can, put a real tutor across from you, and give you something in writing you can work from.

The naturalization interview is here. It's €39 and in French, because the real one will be. The three-question test is free and takes no account.

We're just getting started, so I can't tell you yet what this does for anyone's result. I'll report back.

I also still couldn't tell you who the Prime Minister is without checking. There have been a few since Élisabeth...