I’m excited to let you know we’ve just released a new version of Kwiziq with some powerful new features to help your French language skills, and give you a really clear picture of how taking regular French tests is one of the most effective ways to improve.
New Dashboard
Your Improvement Timeline
The first thing you’ll notice if you’re a regular user of our French tests is the new Dashboard. After completing any French test, your Dashboard is there to show you how you improving your French. The most important change here is the addition of the new French improvement timeline graph. When you first see this graph it’ll be pretty boring since it only has one data point but over time this graph shows how your French is improving overall.
If you’ve come back to us some time after your initial CEFR test, then you might see a long gap in your early data, like this:
The graph shows two things: the top line represents the topics you’ve covered in your tests out of the thousands of topics available in the system. The line below shows your Kwiziq Score over the whole French language (or rather the grammatical aspect up to and including level B2).
What’s a Kwiziq Score?
Kwiziq is built using our advanced language testing technology. Kwiziq builds what we affectionately call Brainmaps of your language skills which it maintains as you take more tests. Your Kwiziq Score is an overall measure of confidence in French. However, you should think about it simply as a number that you try to grow.
My Kwiziq score is low, does that mean I’m no good?
Not at all. In fact, a low score is inevitable for everyone initially: the score is expressed on the Dashboard as a ratio over the whole language based on what you have tested so far, so in fact it will start out tiny. You should see a steep increase in the early days as you do more tests and Kwiziq learns more about what you know and finds your level.
Don’t worry about the actual value too much; what’s important is that as you take more French tests, you should start to see the value increase over time. What you need to know is that your Kwiziq Score will generally…
- Go up if you get questions right
- Stay the same if you skip questions
- Go down if you make lots of mistakes
You can also see your improvement timelines in smaller contexts, such as a specific level where the score will be larger because it’s expressed out of a smaller number of topics.
Achievements and Level Progress
This section has changed only slightly but we have more important changes coming soon.
What’s new on the left is a display of your credits and also an upgrade option. We’ve been experimenting to find the best way provide value to customers and we’re moving towards a so-called "freemium" subscription model. More on that in a bit. On the right you can see how you’re doing against each French level and you can test against each level.
You can see your French improvement timeline for each level and also a score breakdown by French language area. This shows how you’re doing in as many as nine key linguistic areas so you know what to focus on:
If you see red in any of these then you’ve been making mistakes in those areas. Green indicates good confidence, and yellow shows areas you’re working on but not yet confident in. Grey areas have yet to be tested. When this whole chart is green, you’ve mastered everything in the level.
Kwiziq automatically creates tests for you based on your scores so you don’t need to worry what to do next. It will test you in a way that gradually helps you improve. But what should you study?
Your Personalised Studyplan
Every time you take a French test from your Dashboard, Kwiziq analyses your scores and rebuilds your personalised Studyplan. It looks like this:
On the right, you’ll see "Why?" which explains why Kwiziq thinks you should study or freshen up a particular topic. The colour indicates your current score against that topic as a rough indicator. The topic itself contains a link to a lesson specifically around that subject, which includes examples of use and often videos to help you learn. You can click the lesson to open it:
You’ll see your score on the right. Any score over 50% is a good score and considered a "pass." Kwiziq scores are harsh! Negative scores just indicate you’ve made mistakes around this subject recently.
Beneath your French Studyplan is your test history.
Subscribing to Kwiziq
Anyone can register for Kwiziq and use the service for free (in small doses). We know lots of people are casually interested in getting better but not really ready to invest in their own education because they’re not really committed to improving their French. We therefore allow anyone to take up to ten kwizzes (smart French tests) per month with us for free, see their improvement timelines, get personalised Studyplans and access the lessons chosen for them. For serious learners though, for those who genuinely intend to improve their French, we have a great value-for-money package:
Premium Subscription
Our Premium subscription allows you to take unlimited tests so you can improve as rapidly as you wish. Kwiziq will keep your Personalised Studyplan up-to-date after each test so you know exactly what you need to do to improve. In our experience, people taking regular tests experience dramatically accelerated improvement compared to those that don’t. Take a look at some of our statistics from September 2013.
We have loads more goodies to come to help accelerate your learning and make it more fun. Watch this space!
Remember, you can find out your French CEFR level with us for free.
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.