Épreuve
Production écrite
Level
B1
Time
45 min
Marks
/25
Your 45-minute writing mission
One task, 45 minutes, 25 points. What the prompt fixes, how to spend the time, and the five criteria your examiner scores.
By the end of this lesson
- Read a B1 prompt and name your role, your reader and the two jobs it hands you.
- Split the 45 minutes into 10 to prepare, 30 to write and 5 to check.
- Clear the 160-word floor with a margin, and count your words the way the exam counts them.
- Name the five criteria on the grid and say what each one rewards.
Forty-five minutes feels generous until the sheet is in front of you. Two habits eat that time. You start writing before you've worked out what the prompt is really asking. Then at minute forty you count 118 words and panic.
This lesson sets the paper up for you. You'll see what the single task looks like and how to spend the 45 minutes. Then come the real length rules and the five criteria your examiner scores.
One task, 45 minutes, 25 points
Production écrite is the third paper of your collective session, and it's the quickest one to describe. One exercise, 45 minutes, 25 points. There's no second task waiting on the next page.
That single task is an essai, a piece of writing where you take a position on a familiar question and defend it. The prompt decides what it looks like on the page. Sometimes it's a formal letter to an institution. Sometimes it's a post on a forum, or an article for a newsletter.
The themes stay close to school, training and working life. You'll be asked about your studies, a workplace habit, a local project, a change your school or company wants to make. Nothing technical, and nothing you'd have to research.
Every prompt fixes three things, and finding them takes about ninety seconds. Who are you in this situation? Who reads you? What exactly must the text contain? That third question usually hides two jobs: facts to describe, and an opinion to defend.
Consigne type · production écriteB1 · exercice unique · 160 mots minimum
Vous travaillez depuis six mois dans une entreprise française. Le journal interne demande aux nouveaux employés de raconter leur arrivée. Vous écrivez un article dans lequel vous décrivez vos premières semaines et vous donnez votre avis sur l'accueil réservé aux nouveaux collègues. (160 mots minimum)
Read that prompt again with a pen in your hand. Your role is a new employee, so you write from six months of experience. Your reader is everyone in the company, which sets a polite and public tone. And the consigne, the instruction line, hands you two verbs: décrire and donner votre avis. Deliver only the description and you lose points on the task criterion, however clean your French is.
Point d'étape 1/4
0 / 3
Q1How long does the B1 writing paper last, and how many tasks does it contain?
Q2Which three things does every B1 writing prompt fix before you write a word?
Q3The prompt asks you to describe your first weeks AND give your opinion. You only describe. Which criterion drops first?
Ten minutes to prepare, thirty to write, five to check
Forty-five minutes divides into three unequal jobs. Ten minutes to think, thirty to write, five to check. Those numbers are a plan rather than a rule, but candidates who skip the first ten usually lose more than ten.
In those first ten minutes, read the prompt twice and mark it up. Circle your role and your reader, then underline every verb of the consigne. Jot down the words the topic will need, in French, before you need them mid-sentence. Finish with a short plan on your scratch paper: an opening, two or three developed points, a closing.
The thirty writing minutes then go quickly, because you already know what each paragraph is for. Write straight through and resist rereading every line. Corrections belong at the end.
The last five minutes have two jobs of their own. Count your words and write the total at the bottom, because the exam expects that number. Then reread once, hunting agreements: plural endings, past participles, adjectives. Those are morphosyntaxe points that cost you nothing to recover.
Counting works by one simple rule. A word is anything sitting between two spaces. So j'ai counts as one word and parce que counts as two. To count fast, put a small dot above every tenth word as you reread. Sixteen dots and you've cleared the floor.
Now the numbers that matter. The minimum is 160 words and there's no maximum. Aim for 170 to 190. That band clears the floor with a margin and still leaves your five checking minutes intact. Writing 260 words doesn't buy extra points, it buys extra mistakes to find.
One rule is worth memorising, because it's brutal. A text of 79 words or fewer, under half the minimum, scores zero on the whole task. Not a reduced mark. Zero. So if you're running short with three minutes left, add two finished sentences rather than a new paragraph you can't complete.
Point d'étape 2/4
0 / 4
Q1How should you split the 45 minutes?
Q2How does the DELF define a word when you count?
Q3What length should you aim for on the B1 task?
Q4Your finished text is 76 words long. What happens to it?
The five criteria behind your 25
Your examiner doesn't count mistakes and subtract. They fill in a grid of five criteria, and each one is worth 5 points.
| The criterion | What it rewards | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Réalisation de la tâche | You did what the prompt asked, in the right genre and at the right length | 5 |
| Cohérence et cohésion | Your ideas follow an order, and the links between them are visible | 5 |
| Adéquation sociolinguistique | Your tone fits your reader, from the greeting to the sign-off | 5 |
| Lexique | Your vocabulary is broad enough and precise, spelling included | 5 |
| Morphosyntaxe | Your sentences hold: tenses, agreements, pronouns, word order | 5 |
Two details in that table should change how you prepare.
First, lexical spelling lives inside lexique. Spell a word wrong and you lose on the same line that rewards a rich vocabulary. A word you're unsure of is therefore a word to swap for one you own.
Second, lexique and morphosyntaxe together are 10 points out of 25. Almost half your mark is your French itself, whatever your ideas are worth. A short correct sentence beats an ambitious broken one, every time.
The scale is the other surprise. Each criterion is marked 0, 1, 3 or 5. There's no 4 and no half point. So a criterion sitting at 3 is two whole points below 5, and the way up is usually one habit. Adding connectors. Naming your reader properly. Finishing the second verb of the consigne.
Point d'étape 3/4
0 / 4
Q1How is the B1 writing grid organised?
Q2Which marks can a single criterion receive?
Q3Where is lexical spelling assessed?
Q4How many of the 25 points reward your French itself, whatever your ideas are worth?
Where marks vanish before your French is read
Three failures are decided before your examiner reads a single verb ending.
The first is going off topic. A text that answers a slightly different question is hors sujet, off topic. It caps two criteria at once: réalisation de la tâche and lexique. That second one surprises people. Your vocabulary is capped because the words you used belong to a topic nobody asked about.
The second failure is the wrong genre. Answering a formal call for opinions with a chatty message to a friend caps réalisation de la tâche and cohérence et cohésion. Genre isn't decoration here. It decides your greeting, your pronoun and your closing line.
The third is length, and you already know it. Seventy-nine words or fewer, and the task is zero.
All three are avoided in your first five minutes, with three questions written at the top of your scratch paper. What's the theme? What genre is asked for? Who reads me? Then write an opening that answers all three at once.
Modèle · les quatre premiers gestes≈ 80 mots
Madame la Directrice, je vous écris au sujet de la fermeture de la salle informatique annoncée la semaine dernière.
Reader named, topic named. The first sentence shows you have the right reader and the right subject. That settles part of réalisation de la tâche and part of adéquation sociolinguistique in one line.
Depuis deux ans, je viens y travailler chaque soir après mes cours, et une dizaine d'étudiants font la même chose.
Facts before opinion. One concrete detail, dated and counted. Facts from your own life are the cheapest material available, and a plausible invented one is allowed.
C'est pourquoi je pense que cette fermeture pénaliserait surtout les étudiants qui n'ont pas d'ordinateur chez eux.
Position, with a connector. The connector c'est pourquoi ties the opinion to the fact you just gave. Coherence marks come from links like that one, not from long sentences.
Je vous remercie de votre attention et je reste à votre disposition pour en discuter. Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame la Directrice, mes salutations distinguées.
A closing that fits the reader. A formal letter ends formally, and the closing formula comes last. Two lines cost you nothing, and they finish the register your opening promised.
Notice how little that opening costs. Four sentences, no rare vocabulary, and three criteria are already pointing the right way.
Point d'étape 4/4
0 / 3
Q1An off-topic text (hors sujet) caps which two criteria?
Q2What do you write at the bottom of your finished script?
Q3Which three questions belong at the top of your scratch paper in the first five minutes?
Key takeaways
- One task, 45 minutes, 25 points. The theme comes from school, training or working life.
- The prompt fixes three things: who you are, who reads you, and what the text must contain.
- Plan 10, write 30, check 5. The plan is what stops you rewriting at minute forty.
- The floor is 160 words, aim for 170 to 190, and there's no maximum. At 79 words or fewer the whole task scores zero.
- Five criteria, 5 points each, and the grid names them in French: réalisation de la tâche, cohérence et cohésion, adéquation sociolinguistique, lexique, morphosyntaxe.