🕯️Translation: “Halloween Lesson: When My Mistakes Became My Teachers”

Last week, I revealed my secret weapon—learning French twice through Duolingo: once as an English learner and once as a (slightly delusional) French user. And, my phone and browser are all set to French. Also, Carly suggested Easy French and Oh La La, I Speak French, and I said I am going to look them up this week. But Alas! I couldn’t.. Something else kept me very busy this week and I’ll have to postpone the deep-dive of those channels to next week. So…. This week, I added another twist to my setup.

🎃 The Impulse That Paid Off

This post isn’t spooky, but it did start with a Halloween sale. 🎃

Image 1: Kwiziq’s Halloween sale

Kwiziq, the grammar-nerd corner of the internet, was offering 32% off premium. That number is just one more than the date Halloween is celebrated annually. Fittingly spooky, right?

With the discount, the 1-year plan became even cheaper than the yearly cost of a 2-year plan (too big a commitment!). They made an offer I couldn’t resist. I’ve used it before and loved it, but this time I decided to commit for the year. And honestly? Best impulse purchase of October. I’ll call it an investment!

Image 2: Kwiziq plan

🧩 Kwiziq vs. Duolingo: The Battle of the Brains

I’m still using Duolingo as I’ve found it’s unbeatable for vocabulary, but where Duolingo gamifies progress (and yes, I still adore my little green owl🦉), Kwiziq analyzes it. Every mistake comes with a tiny, polite essay explaining what I did wrong and why. No vague “Oops! Try again!” here.

Image 3: Mistake on Duolingo

It’s like Duolingo says, “wrong,”
and Kwiziq says, “Let’s unpack your trauma.”

Image 4: Mistake on Kwiziq

Their “Learn and Discuss” button takes you to a whole lesson that describes the concept with examples, and makes it really easy to figure out mistakes. No more judgment errors and misunderstandings!

Image 5: Mistakes lead to lessons on Kwiziq

Not only this, the “Discuss this lesson” button leads you to a Q&A forum where I could ask expert users to explain why I was wrong. I also found others who made the same mistakes. Phew! I am not alone and I am not dumb!

Image 6: Kwiziq Q&A forum

💬 The Case of the Missing Forums

Apparently, Duolingo once had such forums too. I read this post on Reddit about people quitting Duolingo. One Reddit user Alskyor says:

Quit after reading 2000 days. I noticed the quality plummet after some of the old amazing stories were removed (like the guy working as a fisherman after being broken up with). AI sucks, the loss of forums was miserable, and lack of updates for other courses turned a promising company into slop. Auf Wiedersehen, Duo.

That’s quite a rant (in my honest opinion). 2000 days is a long time though, so I get where they’re coming from. Well, I am not quitting Duo anytime soon, but I agree these forums would have been very valuable both for discussing mistakes and for feeling a sense of belonging with a community of learners.

But reading that made me realize something: community really matters. I’ve never used the old forums, but I can imagine how powerful it must have been to discuss lessons, clarify doubts, and share “aha” moments directly within the app. I often crave that kind of space when Duo leaves me hanging after marking something wrong. Without an explanation or a place to ask why, I’m left to rely on Reddit, WordReference, or now, Kwiziq.

It made me appreciate Kwiziq even more this week. Every mistake there becomes a learning opportunity rather than a dead end. Each incorrect answer opens into a full explanation, and even a mini-lesson that helps me fix the misunderstanding at its root. Duolingo motivates me to show up; Kwiziq teaches me why I’m wrong—and both are essential in their own way.

🧠 A Peek Inside My Brainmap

Back to the real star of my week: all the things on Kwiziq that kept me busy. I jumped back on Lawless French lessons on Kwiziq on October 16th. Here’s how my progress looks currently…

Image 7: Kwiziq Brainmap and Progress

I’ll admit a mistake. I should have shared how this Brainmap looked so empty in Week 1, but is now full of greens that show topics I have become very good at, and the yellows that show areas I still need to work on.

Image 8: Kwiziq Brainmap on October 25, 2025 (Oh! What a day for all multiples of 5s!)

😬Some reds—my weakest areas. And so many greys (uncharted territory: topics I haven’t touched)… Oof! I have a long way to go… But at least the progress graph (called the Improvement Timeline) is consistently rising, so that’s great! It keeps me motivated to come back for more.

I also discovered one of my favorite features: detailed lesson logs. I can see every quiz I’ve taken, what I missed, and how I improved.

Image 9: Lesson Logs or “Kwiz history” as they call it.

I can always revisit my mistakes. More trauma unpacking…. It’s strangely comforting—like seeing proof that my chaos has structure.

And this week, structure paid off.

🌸 Grammar Wins of the Week

A few weeks ago, Jessalyn commented on my post that there are patterns for genders of nouns in French. I finally learned some general rules to tell which nouns are feminine and which are masculine—something that’s haunted me since jour un (day one). No, it’s not foolproof (French always has exceptions), but it’s made me feel more confident when guessing.

And just when I thought I was done, I had another burning question!

In French, there are two words for mornings (matin/matinée), evenings (soir/soirée), days (jour/journée) and years (an/année). This week, my thirst for knowledge of these little things was quenched. 

🦉 Over in Duoland…

Meanwhile, my French score on Duo jumped to 86, and I’m already halfway to 87. Not bad for someone still refusing to skip Legendary lessons.

Image 10: Duolingo stats this week!

I made mighty progress this week—especially compared to last week, when getting back on Kwiziq kept me fully occupied.

Image 11: Duolingo improvement this week

So I spent 358 minutes (almost 6 hours) on lessons. But Duolingo still doesn’t keep lesson logs or explain why I got something wrong. Sometimes I stare at the red ‘Incorrect’ message thinking, “Okay… but why though?” Kwiziq fills that gap perfectly.

And through it all, my trusty companion remains WordReference—still my favorite online dictionary, my loyal grammar therapist, and the only reason I haven’t confused la fin (the end) with le faim (the hunger) yet.

Between Kwiziq’s precision and Duolingo’s persistence, I feel like I’ve found the perfect combo: one app trains my brain, the other tests my patience.

🎶 Taylor Swift: The Remix Revelation

Before I sign off, a micro-dose of Taylor Swift. I found an Arabic style remix of The Fate of Ophelia in an Instagram Reel that I am linking here. At first, I found it hilarious. And then I got addicted to this clip even more than the original song. NEED THE FULL VERSION… ASAP…

But it led me to think about the power of social media to remix culture—how snippets, fan edits, and random Reels can reshape how we experience art. It’s not just about sharing anymore; it’s about reinterpretation. People are constantly translating music, humor, and emotion across languages and styles. Just like how I remix my French learning through Duolingo, Kwiziq, and YouTube, creators remix songs, languages, and aesthetics to make something entirely new.

Maybe language learning and music fandom have more in common than I thought—both are acts of translation, reinterpretation, and obsession in equal measure.

📺 What’s Next

Next week, fingers crossed, I’ll finally dive into Oh La La, I Speak French….

At first blush, the channel looks fun. And, as she says in her intro, she’ll teach me “the language of Romance” (and even the occasional swear word 😅).

There’s many videos categorized by Current language level, concepts of grammar, listening skills, etc. and even slang! I definitely have my work cut out for me….

Until then—

Living my French learning era,

Dishant