The quiz just had a major update. We added a slider, now you choose the level. This is how you immerse in real life French!
There are many things I’d like to do with the content on site. You should just see my list of features to roll out. They take time, and money, and so developing them takes time. I’m thrilled to announce today that the quiz you know and love has gotten an exciting upgrade.
The goal of the project has always been: anyone, anywhere can immerse in French with fun and ease. I have written about the inspiration for the project many places on the site. I believe children can immerse so easily because all they have are there ears. No other reasons stopping them or rules or vocab to remember. They just listen.
In order to make the anyone, anywhere possible, I had to do something about the most challenging clips on site. So many of the hundreds of clips are super fast, or quite challenging. Then again, that is French in real life. It’s not slowing down just because we’re in A1 or A2. The friends at happy hour will keep on conversing over each other. The person on the phone knows you’re American, but she hasn’t slowed down a bit. French, in real life, is moving fast.
Here’s what’s new:
Smart Quiz
Natural Language Processing. Under the hood, this thing got a heck of a lot smarter.
For each clip on the site, we analyze all the words. We figure out their base form and we establish their level. CEFR levels are more art than science. Estimates for CEFR look at public domain and base estimates on how many times the word can be cited. This makes sense for a start so we used that.
Once we establish the base form, we check it with an internal doc that combines various open source CEFR leveling databases.
My goal is to have enough content on the site to re-analyze based on word maps and references on site. EG if a word only appears in one clip, it might be less common and therefore more advanced.
For now, I’ll stick with these levels. If you find a word leveled strangely in a daily quiz or other content on site, please comment on the post for us to review!
After leveling each word, we then rank them. They are set to each level of the quiz so that at 100% blank no words are shown. As you move the slider to the right you gradually see most advanced words (C2, C1) first followed by (B2, B1), then down to A2 and one A1 word left blank at the lowest end of the slider.
I’m really excited about this as it can make the most challenging clips on site available.
All Levels
That’s just it. I want anyone, anywhere to be able to take the practice on site, gain confidence, and improve their ear. Now you can choose how you take the quiz and you get far more practice per quiz on site.
I start at 10-25% blank depending on the clip. Then gradually work my way up to 100%. In the past I could only do 3 quizzes per clip, now I can do 5-7. How many do you do?
All the levels are available.
One concern is it might be TOO much. I’m going to explore ways to show how learners use the quizzes to see how to make it easier. But for now, I like the flexibility as everyone has a different confidence and comfort level, especially with real life French. This makes it accessible.
Not only that, with a membership we track words you missed. This will open up providing future practice for you based on trends. This is only available for paid members, so try it out today!
What’s next?
Holy cow. If you could see my lists of features.
For me, the next goals look to learning together, there is a lot to gain from everyone taking quizzes on site, and learning together. That could mean identifying common mistakes, clips that get the most hints used, or most mistakes, identifying trends that way to begin to help map how learners can progress.
There are so many things, the list goes on and on. For now, I just want to be a contribution to more learners. That’s my top priority now, introducing the site to more learners.
If you know anyone who could benefit from the free resource or full podcasts and stats tracking through a membership, please share the site forward.
