I have lived in France for three years and have been learning French for a couple of years prior to that and all I scored was CLB 7 in Listening and Reading, CLB 8 in Writing, and CLB 10 in Speaking.
I really disliked TEF. Make sure you are aware of the structure of the exam and are familiar with the type of exercises. Unfortunately I was not because I thought it would be the same as TCF.
For TEF, they use computers to fill in answers so I had headphones there (at least in the test center I went). For IELTS, there was just loudspeaker (and not very strong one), so I guess people sitting in the back had rather difficult task for that.
I did not find listening to be that difficult. But be ready to have some Canadian accents there. Then again I do not remember that they would use local specific words in any part of test. So Paris French should be ok.
For TEF, they use computers to fill in answers so I had headphones there (at least in the test center I went). For IELTS, there was just loudspeaker (and not very strong one), so I guess people sitting in the back had rather difficult task for that.
I did not find listening to be that difficult. But be ready to have some Canadian accents there. Then again I do not remember that they would use local specific words in any part of test. So Paris French should be ok.
I took the IELTS in a big classroom too. We were about 30 in the room and I was sitting all the way in the back.
There were probably +100 people taking the IELTS for Canada that day. Some of them took the test more than 3 times to score high
For the TEF, I was the only one taking the test lol
They left me in the room by myself during the entire time with no proctor.
The TEF was the least organized and supervised exam I've had.