A2 is where French stops being a set of useful phrases and becomes a language with a spine. At A1, you say what you do. At A2, you have to say what you did last weekend, what you’ll do next month, and why you preferred one option to another.
That’s a genuine jump, and the A2 syllabus is close to twice the size of A1. Most candidates underestimate it because A2 still carries the word “elementary”. It shouldn’t. This is where past tenses arrive, and past tenses are where Indian learners lose the most marks by a wide margin. If you want that contrast drilled with weekly corrected writing, our online DELF A2 preparation course is structured around it.
Below is the whole scope, written as a checklist. Anything you can’t do on demand becomes your study plan. Our breakdown of the most common DELF and DALF mistakes covers the habits that quietly drain marks once you’re inside the exam room.
What Does the DELF A2 Syllabus Cover?
DELF A2 covers around 30 grammar structures and 1,200 to 1,500 active words across 18 themes. The major additions over A1 are the passé composé, the imparfait, the futur simple, object pronouns, reflexive verbs, and comparison. Tasks move from surviving to describing, narrating, and giving simple opinions.
The Council of Europe defines A2 as the waystage level: short exchanges in routine situations, describing your background and immediate environment, and handling matters of immediate need.
The real difference from A1 is time. At A1, everything happens now. At A2, you move between yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and French forces you to make a tense decision each time. That single change accounts for most of the added difficulty and almost all of the lost marks.
Which Grammar Structures Are Tested at DELF A2?
DELF A2 grammar adds the passé composé with both auxiliaries, the imparfait and the contrast between them, direct and indirect object pronouns, reflexive verbs, comparison, and a wider range of negation and connectors. The futur simple and the pronouns y and en are introduced here and consolidated at the B1 level. Everything from A1 remains in scope.
A2 past and future tenses tested
- Passé composé with avoir, including irregular past participles
- Passé composé with être, including participle agreement
- Passé composé of pronominal verbs: je me suis levé
- Imparfait: formation plus its two core uses, description and habit
- Passé composé versus imparfait: the defining contrast of this level
- Futur simple: introduced at A2, formation and irregular stems for aller, être, avoir, faire, venir, pouvoir, voir. Consolidated at B1
- Futur proche versus futur simple
- Présent progressif: être en train de + infinitive, carried over from A1
- Passé récent: venir de + infinitive
- Impératif: negative forms and forms with pronouns, such as lève-toi and ne t’inquiète pas
- Conditionnel de politesse: je voudrais, pourriez-vous
A2 object, reflexive and relative pronouns
- Direct object pronouns: le, la, l’, les
- Indirect object pronouns: lui, leur
- The pronoun
yfor places, introduced at A2 and extended at B1 - The pronoun
enfor quantities, introduced at A2 and extended at B1 - Reflexive pronouns with pronominal verbs
- Relative pronouns
qui,queandoùat a basic level - Stressed pronouns after prepositions
A2 comparison, adverbs, and description
- Comparative: plus, moins, aussi … que
- Superlative: le plus, le moins
- Irregular comparison: meilleur, mieux, pire
- Adverbs of manner
-ment - Adverbs of frequency: toujours, souvent, parfois, rarement, jamais
- Adverb position in the passé composé
A2 connectors, negation, and longer sentences
- Cause and consequence: parce que, car, donc, alors, c’est pourquoi
- Sequencing: d’abord, ensuite, puis, enfin, après
- Contrast: mais, par contre
- Time markers: depuis, il y a, pendant, dans, jusqu’à
- Simple hypothesis: si + présent + futur
- Obligation: il faut + infinitive, devoir
- Extended negation: ne … plus, ne … jamais, ne … rien, ne … personne, ne … encore
- Indirect questions: je voudrais savoir s’il demande où
- Gérondif: en faisant, recognition only at A2, productive use at B1
Still no subjunctive. Still no conditional beyond fixed polite forms. Those belong to B1.
How This A2 Grammar List Was Compiled
There is no official DELF grammar syllabus. France Éducation international defines each level by what a candidate can do, not by a list of structures. This inventory is reconstructed from the CEFR reference levels for French and from a ministry mapping of grammar to CEFR levels, then checked against A2 sample tasks.
Two items sit on a genuine boundary and are marked as such above. The futur simple and the pronouns y and en appear in A2 material but are not fully exploited until B1, so different reference works place them on either side of the line. Learn them at A2 and expect to deepen them later.
Which Vocabulary Themes Come Up in the A2 Exam?
DELF A2 expects 1,200 to 1,500 active words across roughly 18 themes. A1 themes stay and deepen, and new areas arrive: work, studies, health, travel, feelings, and describing people. Narrative vocabulary matters as much as nouns, because most tasks involve telling a story.
The working list:
- Personal history: where you grew up, studied, worked, and lived
- Family and relationships: extended family, friendships, character description
- Physical description: appearance, age, clothing, personality
- Daily and weekly routine: paired with frequency adverbs and time markers
- Work and jobs: roles, tasks, schedules, applying for work
- Studies and education: subjects, exams, institutions, courses
- Housing: types of home, rooms, renting, describing a former home
- Neighborhood and city: amenities, comparing places, opinions on a location
- Shopping and consumer life: shops, prices, comparing products, complaints
- Food and cooking: recipes, ingredients, meals, dietary habits
- Health and the body: symptoms, doctor visits, pharmacy, giving advice
- Travel and holidays: destinations, booking, accommodation, holiday stories
- Transport: journeys, delays, tickets, comparing options
- Weather and climate: describing past and future conditions
- Leisure and sport: activities, frequency, preferences, invitations
- Culture and media: films, music, books, television, simple opinions
- Feelings and reactions: pleased, worried, disappointed, surprised, tired
- Everyday communication: emails, messages, invitations, apologies, thanks
Count how many of those need to be in the past tense. Holiday stories, work history, where you used to live, childhood routine. That’s by design. The A2 paper is designed to make you choose between the passé composé and the imparfait repeatedly.
Every one of those tasks arrives wrapped in French instructions, and the wording carries its own marks. Our guide to the French task wording examiners’ mark decodes the full set.
How Is the DELF A2 Exam Structured?
The A2 exam has four papers, each worth 25 marks. Listening lasts about 25 minutes, with the recordings played twice. Reading is about 30 minutes across four or five short documents. Writing is 45 minutes for two texts of roughly 60-80 words each. The speaking lasts 6 to 8 minutes and is divided into three parts.
Where the syllabus shows up:
Listening. Announcements, voicemails, short conversations, and radio snippets. You need numbers, times, prices, and places, plus enough awareness of tense to tell whether a speaker is describing or narrating.
Reading. Emails, adverts, short articles, listings, and instructions. Comparison structures appear constantly because so many texts weigh two options against each other.
Writing. Two tasks. The first is usually a short personal narrative, which forces past tenses. The second is a reaction: an invitation, an apology, a request, or a short opinion. Our guide to the DELF A2 writing paper shows the marking grid and a corrected sample.
Speaking. A guided interview about your background, a short monologue or exchange from topic cards, and a role-play that usually involves asking for or negotiating something. The DELF A2 speaking format breaks down all three parts and provides model answers.
The written session totals about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Scoring is unchanged from A1: 50 out of 100 overall, and at least 5 out of 25 in every paper.
The step above this one is considerably bigger, so planning for it early pays off. See everything the B1 level demands for the structures waiting on the other side.
Why Do Past Tenses Decide Your A2 Result?
Because the exam is designed around them. Candidates who learn both tenses correctly still lose marks, because knowing the forms and choosing between them under time pressure are two different abilities.
The rule I give students is deliberately blunt.
Passé composé is for things that happened. Single, completed events that move a story forward. J’ai mangé. Elle est partie. Nous avons visité le musée.
Imparfait is for how things were. Background, description, habit, ongoing state. The scenery around the story. Il faisait beau. J’étais fatigué. Chaque samedi, on allait au marché.
Then the test question. Is this a thing that happened, or how things were? Around nine out of ten A2-level choices resolve on that alone.
When I worked with a batch of professionals preparing for A2 while working full-time jobs, we spent two entire sessions retelling a single weekend story in three different ways, changing nothing but the tense. Their writing scores moved by four to six marks. Nothing else in the A2 syllabus returns that much for the time invested.
The second habit worth building early is agreement of participles with être. Elle est allée, not elle est allé. Small, and ticked every time.
How Do You Know You’re Ready for DELF A2?
You’re ready when you can narrate a past weekend for two minutes using both past tenses accurately, write 80 words about a personal experience without consulting a table, compare two things naturally, and follow a two-person conversation at normal speed. If tenses still need thinking time, you aren’t.
Speed is the real test, not knowledge.
Try it properly. Pick a genuine memory: a trip, an interview, a wedding. Speak for two minutes with no notes. Then write the same story in 80 words. If the spoken version drifted into the present tense because you had no time to conjugate, that’s your diagnosis. You know the tenses. You can’t deploy them live yet.
Most learners need 100 to 150 hours beyond A1 to feel comfortable here, which is about two to three months at two sessions per week.
A2 is the last level most learners reach comfortably on their own, which makes it worth knowing where that stops working. We set out that boundary in our guide to why self-study of French stalls on production.
What Does a Ten-Week A2 Study Plan Look Like?
Sequence the syllabus so the past tenses get the most runway and the mocks land last. Front-load the passé composé, add the imparfait and the contrast in weeks three and four, then layer pronouns, the future, and comparison before finishing with timed papers.
Weeks 1 to 2. Passé composé with both auxiliaries, including irregular participles. Personal history and work vocabulary. Tell a past story aloud every session.
Weeks 3 to 4. Imparfait, then the contrast. Housing, neighborhood, and childhood vocabulary, which naturally pulls the imparfait out of you.
Weeks 5 to 6. Object pronouns, y and en, reflexive verbs. Health, shopping, and routine vocabulary. Start timed reading.
Weeks 7 to 8. Futur simple, comparison, adverbs and connectors. Travel, leisure, and media vocabulary. Begin timed writing at 80 words.
Weeks 9 to 10. Consolidation and mocks. Two full papers under exam conditions plus role-play rehearsal.
Professionals fitting this around work usually prefer French classes online across India and abroad, because a two-hour evening session survives travel weeks better than a fixed classroom slot does. Whichever format you choose, book the exam early. Sessions run four times a year, and metro centers fill fast.
What to Prioritize in the DELF A2 Syllabus
A2 is roughly double A1, so plan two to three months rather than one. Past tenses carry the level, and the passé composé versus imparfait decision deserves more practice time than everything else combined. And readiness is measured in speed, because the exam gives you no room to think through a conjugation table.
Print the checklist. Be honest about the shaky items. Work only on those.
For a straight answer on whether you’re A2-ready, call or WhatsApp +91 7011164582, or drop into our Sector 18 Noida center. We teach DELF classes covering all four CEFR levels in batches of 6 to 10 students, with corrected writing every week.
