I received a wonderful email from one of our subscribers, Paula Aston, this week. I’d asked some of our students to take part in a French writing practice exercise, but Paula submitted something unusual.
It wasn’t one of the exercises I’d set, but rather a short article she’d written in French. She asked if we’d judge the level and give constructive feedback. I gave it to Aurélie to take a look, who, somewhat surprised, exclaimed:
 |
One of our students wrote this?! It’s excellent. She made very few mistakes. Definitely B2-C1 level… It’s of the quality you find on online news to be honest, a French person wouldn’t have done better! |  |
Naturally, I told Paula who was thrilled. I was intrigued and asked what had prompted her to write the article, given that it wasn’t one of the French writing exercises we had set. She explained:
|
I wrote the article as part of my application to a language degree course at university. I had misgivings about my proficiency in French (I took A-Levels many years ago) so I started an intensive revision programme beforehand. I was so pleased to discover French-test.com as it has helped me to focus on and improve specific areas of weakness. To my surprise and delight I have been given an unconditional offer of a place! Thank you for your help; your site is an excellent resource that has helped me to gain confidence and rediscover my love of languages. | |
That made our week!
We’ve worked extraordinarily hard on Kwiziq, the technology behind French Test, and it’s enormously rewarding to know that all that effort has paid off and helped someone to achieve their dreams. I want to publicly wish Paula the very best of luck with her language degree and hopefully encourage other people to follow their language dreams too.
Gareth
Author info
[Follow on Twitter: @gruffdavies] Despite the very Welsh name, Gruff is actually half French. Nowadays, he's a tech entrepreneur (and some-time novelist) but he used to be a physicist at Imperial College before getting hooked on inventing things. He has a special interest in language learning, speaks five languages to varying degrees of fluency and he often blogs about language learning, science, and technology. As well as co-founding Kwiziq, he is the author the Amazon best-selling SF thriller, The Looking Glass Club and the inventor of the Exertris gaming exercise-bike and Pidgin, a free online tool that makes drawing flow charts and relationship diagrams as quick and easy as describing them in pidgin English.