What do the French civic exam questions look like?
The paper is entirely multiple choice: 28 knowledge questions and 12 situational ones. Here is how the questions are built, where they come from, and what separates an easy question from one that is quietly trying to catch you out.
How the questions are built
Each question offers several answers, of which exactly one is correct. The knowledge questions cover the values of the Republic, the institutions, history, laïcité (state secularism) and everyone's rights and duties. The situational questions describe a real case and ask which response matches republican principles.
Every question comes from the official syllabus, the Interior Ministry's 222 topic sheets. Nothing falls outside it: master the sheets and the format, and you have mastered the paper.
A worked example
What is the motto of the French Republic? The options offered: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité; Unité, Travail, Progrès; Liberté, Justice, Solidarité. The right answer is the first, set out in Article 2 of the 1958 Constitution.
The trap in this kind of question is plausibility: every option sounds like a motto a republic might have. That is the signature of this paper, and it is why recognising is not enough. You have to know.
The classic multiple choice traps
First trap: near-identical answers, where only a date, an institution or a single word changes. Second trap: the clock, which pushes you to read too fast. Third trap: situational questions where two responses both look reasonable, but only one matches the principles of the Republic.
All three are trained the same way: by answering a lot of questions in the right format, with explanations that show why the correct answer is correct. That is exactly what the practice here is.
Practise on real questions
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