French Exams for Beginners: 6 Quick Online Tests to Bone Up the Basics

How do you know if you’re still an early beginner, or making progress towards the intermediate stage?

How do you know when you’ll be ready for higher-level French courses, an official French exam or even life in France?

Here’s how: with French exams for beginners that are specifically built to test your foundational language skills.

We’ll show you six online French tests that you can take to find out where you stand in French and how you can improve.

Contents

• What Are the Benefits of an Online Proficiency Exam?
• 6 Pleasantly Challenging French Exams That Beginners Can Take Online
• • French Level Test from France Langue
  • Basic French Test from École des trois ponts
  • Ev@lang Placement Test
  • Kwiziq’s French Proficiency Test
  • French Test from the Alliance Française
  • French Level Test from Institut Linguistique Adenet
• And one more thing...

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

What Are the Benefits of an Online Proficiency Exam?

Making sure you’re heading in the right direction as a beginner French learner has never been easier!

Let’s put it this way: there’s no professor to schmooze, no studying required—and heck, in the comfort of your own home, you don’t even need to wear pants if you don’t want to. (I’m not judging!)

That’s because you can take these beginner French proficiency exams conveniently online, whenever you want. Further, they generally don’t take long to do. You can complete most of them in less than an hour, and you won’t be waiting anxiously for your results to get mailed to you weeks later.

Best of all, online proficiency tests are generally free. That means that you can get an accurate idea of what your French level is without spending a dime! Some exams will even recommend resources and activities as next steps to continue to advance your French.

I’ve never seen any university exams do that!

6 Pleasantly Challenging French Exams That Beginners Can Take Online

Now that we know how easy and stress-free this will be, let’s check out the top online French exams for beginners.

French Level Test from France Langue

This French exam for beginners comes to us from France Langue (France Language), a company that has French-language schools all throughout France.

The proficiency test is quick, with 20 questions that can be completed in 20 minutes. The test has six levels, each corresponding to the Common European Framework of Languages (A1 or beginner to C2 or most advanced). That means this test gives you a quick idea of your French level, or rather, how good your beginner French is and if you should advance or continue to work with beginner material.

If you reach questions that are too difficult or that cover material you haven’t learned, that’s an indication that you’ve reached the maximum of your French level. Again, this isn’t an intensive evaluation, but it’s a great place to get a general idea.

Best of all, the test recommends courses and resources after completion. As a bonus, you can take other French language tests on topics such as art, architecture and music. While these aren’t proficiency or beginners tests per se, they will inevitably help boost your knowledge and grow your vocabulary in French.

Basic French Test from École des trois ponts

This French proficiency exam is specifically geared toward beginners. Created by the École des trois ponts (School of the Three Bridges) in France, this test asks questions specific to what beginners should know as opposed to asking questions in increasing difficulty to gauge your level.

There are 20 questions to test your basic competence in French. The questions range from conjugation patterns to French prepositions to common pronouns. If you get a question wrong on a specific topic, you know that you must continue to work on that aspect of the French language.

Further, if you’ve ever wanted to study in France, this could be your chance! This test can be used to apply to École des trois ponts to learn French in France through one of their immersion courses.

Ev@lang Placement Test

This exam was actually created by the French Ministry of Education, so even though it’s pretty informal, it’s still a structured tool to give you an accurate idea of your French level.

Ev@lang is an online language assessment for all learners of French. This test places students at a level of French from beginner to advanced. Again, while this isn’t a beginner test per se, it’s a quick way to make sure you’re on the right path toward an eventual intermediate and advanced level.

Perhaps you’ll be inspired to take an official DELF French examination after you see your results!

Kwiziq’s French Proficiency Test

Kwiziq has six tests for six levels of French (beginner to advanced). The best part, however, is that three of the tests on Kwiziq are specifically for beginners: A0, A1 and A2, each increasing slightly in difficulty.

I’d suggest starting with A0 and advancing logically through the levels depending on how you do.

Each test includes 10 multiple choice questions. Afterwards, the results are broken down question-by-question. Kwiziq then recommends resources and tools for improving your French based on the questions you got wrong.

French Test from the Alliance Française

Like the French Ministry of Education, the Alliance française (French Alliance) is an authority on the French language and its promotion. As such, it offers online French tests for all levels of French from A1 (beginner) to B2 (pre-advanced).

A1 is the beginner test, so simply click the link for the test and choose “A1.” The test starts off with a self-assessment where you’ll state your ability to perform different tasks in French. Next, there are questions based on the self-assessment to confirm your level of French. Unlike other online French exams for beginners, the questions require short written responses.

Best of all, besides the automated test results, you can also send your test to an Alliance Française chapter for detailed results. This means you’ll get deeper insight into your results and a better idea of where to go next to grow your French competency.

Each test also provides you with the option of conversing with a French instructor for further evaluation and recommendations.

French Level Test from Institut Linguistique Adenet

The Institut Linguistique Adenet (Adenet Linguistic Institute) offers a proficiency test for all levels of French. Like other proficiency tests, it starts with beginner questions and then grows in difficulty. Unlike the others, though, it has 32 questions for a more in-depth look at your level.

After you complete the test, the results give a pretty accurate assessment of your beginner French level and skills. Further, along with the results, the Institut Linguistique Adenet will recommend one of its courses that correspond to your level and skills so you can continue growing your French competency.

Once you’ve got an idea of what level of French you’re at, you’ve now got an idea of how you can boost your skills. You don’t want to be stuck with just beginner-level tests forever, after all! 

Luckily, there are plenty of learning resources that let you be mindful of your progress and pinpoint what you should work on. This is a common trait of most modern French language learning programs, which offer features to let you simultaneously learn French and review what you already know. 

By consistently gauging and improving your French skills bit by bit, you’ll be moving up the test difficulty scale in no time.

But for now, focus on those essential basics! Choose the French test that works best for you and test away!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

And one more thing...

If you like learning French on your own time and from the comfort of your smart device, then I'd be remiss to not tell you about FluentU.

FluentU has a wide variety of great content, like interviews, documentary excerpts and web series, as you can see here:

FluentU brings native French videos with reach. With interactive captions, you can tap on any word to see an image, definition and useful examples.

For example, if you tap on the word "crois," you'll see this:

Practice and reinforce all the vocabulary you've learned in a given video with learn mode. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning, and play the mini-games found in our dynamic flashcards, like "fill in the blank."

All throughout, FluentU tracks the vocabulary that you’re learning and uses this information to give you a totally personalized experience. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned.

Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)