DELF B1 listening: three recordings, each played twice
B1 listening is three recordings and twenty questions in twenty-five minutes, and every recording is played twice: first a conversation, then two radio documents. This page describes the all-multiple-choice format, one of the two that the official candidate manual says are in circulation: each question is a QCM with three options. In the official sample paper, no question is worth much more than the one beside it. So the paper does not reward choosing which questions to fight for. It rewards knowing what the first play is for and what the second one is for.
Updated 1 October 2026
Three recordings, twenty questions, two plays each
| Exercise | Documents | Questions | Question format | Plays | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO-Ex1 | 1 audio document | 6 | Multiple choice, three options | 2 | 7 |
| CO-Ex2 | 1 audio document | 7 | Multiple choice, three options | 2 | 9 |
| CO-Ex3 | 1 audio document | 7 | Multiple choice, three options | 2 | 9 |
| Total | 25 min | 20 | 25 |
Source · the official DELF B1 tout public format.
The kind of French the B1 recordings use
The CEFR describes B1 as understanding the main points of clear, standard language on familiar matters: work, school, leisure. Read the two qualifiers as protections. The speech is meant to be clear, and the subject is meant to be one you have met before. Our guide to the B1 level quotes the descriptor and reads its fine print.
In the room that becomes three documents. The first is a conversation between two people, and it is the short one. The second and third are radio documents of about two minutes each. Compare that with A2, where the same twenty-five minutes are cut into fourteen short documents, some of them answered with images or by matching. At B1 you stay with one document for several minutes, and you hear it twice.
In the practice set on this site, most questions ask for something that is said out loud: who does what, on which condition, for what reason. A smaller share asks for what sits behind the words: the main idea, a speaker’s intention, an attitude. The subjects stay close to daily life: volunteering, travel, work, the media, everyday environmental questions.
How the points are spread across the three exercises
In the sample paper published by France Éducation international, the conversation carries seven points for six questions. Each radio document carries nine points for seven. Between them the two radio documents hold eighteen of the paper’s twenty-five points, so the opening conversation is the lightest of the three blocks.
Inside an exercise the weights hardly move. In the table below each question is worth one point or one and a half, and the paper holds ten of each. The best-paid question earns one and a half times the worst-paid. In the B2 sample paper that ratio is five to one. One caution: the examining body sets the value of each question paper by paper, so read these figures as the shape of the scale, not as a promise.
That near-flat scale decides the method. There is no expensive question to protect and no cheap one to give up, so triage buys nothing. Ten right answers are worth between ten and fifteen points, depending on which ten. What moves the mark is how many questions you settle. Under the table sit the two thresholds those points feed: the pass mark for the exam and the floor for a single paper.
| Exercise | Points | What each question is worth |
|---|---|---|
| CO-Ex1 | 7 | 1 · 1.5 · 1 · 1.5 · 1 · 1 |
| CO-Ex2 | 9 | 1 · 1 · 1 · 1.5 · 1.5 · 1.5 · 1.5 |
| CO-Ex3 | 9 | 1.5 · 1 · 1 · 1 · 1.5 · 1.5 · 1.5 |
| Total | 25 |
Pass mark: 50 out of 100 across the four papers.
Section floor: under 5 out of 25 in any one paper and the whole exam is failed.
Source · the official DELF B1 tout public format.
An interview excerpt and two questions, explained
Excerpt
Journaliste : Que fait-on dans ces jardins, à part cultiver des légumes ?
Mireille : Beaucoup de choses. Certains jardins organisent des ateliers de compostage ou de semences pour les enfants des écoles. D’autres accueillent des cours de cuisine qui utilisent les récoltes du jardin. C’est un lieu de lien social très fort.
Journaliste : Est-ce que ces jardins reçoivent un soutien financier de la mairie ?
Mireille : Oui. La ville met à disposition les terrains gratuitement et finance une partie des outils et des semences. Mais les bénévoles assurent la grande majorité du travail d’entretien.
1. Quel type d’atelier est organisé pour les enfants des écoles ?
- A Des ateliers de compostage et de semences
- B Des ateliers de peinture et de dessin
- C Des ateliers de cuisine internationale
2. Quel soutien la mairie apporte-t-elle aux jardins partagés ?
- A Elle finance tous les coûts d’entretien
- B Elle envoie des employés municipaux pour entretenir les jardins
- C Elle met à disposition les terrains gratuitement et finance outils et semences
Answer +
Excerpt from a practice interview written for this site, with two of its questions.
Both answers are said almost word for word. Mireille names workshops on composting and seeds for schoolchildren, and option A repeats her. She says the town lends the land free of charge and pays for part of the tools and seeds, and option C shortens that sentence. Do not count on such closeness every time: a right option can just as well reword what was said.
Here the work lies in the wrong options, which are built from words you really heard. “Cuisine” is in the recording, but those classes are not for schoolchildren and nobody calls them international. “Entretien” is there too, in the one sentence that hands the upkeep to volunteers, not to the town or its staff. Recognising a word is not the same as hearing the claim. The check is whether the speaker said the whole option, and the second play is where you run it.
Twenty-five minutes across three recordings
Official timing
- CO-Ex1 · Played twice7 points
- CO-Ex2 · Played twice9 points
- CO-Ex3 · Played twice9 points
Source · the official DELF B1 tout public format.
A workable split
- CO-Ex16 min
- CO-Ex27 min
- CO-Ex37 min
- Checking your answers5 min
One split that works. It is our arithmetic rather than an official figure, and the free lesson below proposes another.
DELF B1 listening practice that matches the exam
Practice transfers when it has the shape of the exam: one document, its questions in front of you, two plays and not a third. A third play does train the ear, but it builds a habit the room will not allow. B1 listening practice keeps to that shape. The player stops after the second play, it has no pause button, and each question carries the weight shown in the table above.
One limit, stated plainly. The audio in our practice is machine-generated, like the questions, and an exercise is published only once a second automated pass agrees with its answer key. It is not broadcast radio, so keep real French radio in your week as well. A listening score here is a count of right answers against a key. It is not an official result. If your paper turns out to be in the other format, a few answers are a word or a figure to write down: the two plays work the same way.
- 1Begin with a full timed mock and set the listening score beside the other three. If it is your lowest, start here. Start a full B1 mock.
- 2Before each recording, read its questions and decide what every one of them is after: a person, a reason, a condition. That leaves six or seven things to listen for, not every word.
- 3On the first play, follow the whole document and tick only what you are sure of. Leave a doubtful question open instead of settling it while the speaker is still talking.
- 4On the second play, listen for the questions still open and for nothing else. An answer you were sure of the first time stays as it is.
- 5After each session, replay every miss until you can point to the sentence that settles it. The free lesson on the listening paper lists four traps to check against.
The free lesson: a game plan for the listening paper
Free lesson · study guide
The DELF B1 listening paper game plan
Three documents, twenty questions, two listens each. What the paper holds, where your twenty-five minutes go, and the traps that cost the most.
Listening paper questions from B1 candidates
Is every B1 recording played twice?+
Yes. All three exercises play their recording twice, the conversation as well as the two radio documents. The same holds at A1 and A2. B2 is where it changes: its third exercise plays each of its short documents once. So nothing at B1 has to be caught on a single pass.
Do all twenty questions carry the same weight?+
Almost, in the official sample paper. Each question there is worth one point or one and a half, and the points table on this page shows ten of each. No question is worth double another. The way to more marks is more right answers, wherever they fall.
What do the three recordings sound like?+
The first is a conversation between two people. The second and third are radio documents, a little longer, with seven questions each instead of six. The hand-written reference documents behind our practice are a podcast on a career change and a short documentary on switching off from screens.
How long do the recordings run?+
Not long. The conversation runs between one minute and a little over a minute and a half, and each radio document about two minutes. These are approximations, not a rule. Even played twice, the three take up less than half of the paper’s twenty-five minutes. The rest is time to read the questions and answer them.
How is B1 listening different from B2 listening?+
In three checkable ways. B2 runs half an hour, with five documents instead of three. Its third exercise plays each document once, where B1 plays everything twice. And in the official sample papers, a question at B2 is worth from half a point to two and a half, against one to one and a half at B1. The B2 listening page sets that format out in full.
Keep reading
The other B1 pages
Ready to find your B1 level?
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