Call Me Crazy, But I Think I Just Built the Social Media of French Language Learning

Published: November 11, 2025 • 7 min read

When I completed version 1.0 of the French Writing Playground application, I felt really good about it. For like a day. Then, ideas, multiple ideas started flowing through my head for how to improve the application. I was initially going to finish the HR Hub design project before getting back to this project, but I couldn't help it.

Therefore, introducing the French Writing Playground, version 2.0, or should I call it, the 'Social Media of French language learning'.

Now let me walk you through the thought process behind every major change that was made to the application.

Major New Features

8 More Themes Added (16 Total)

I added Hungry, Angry, Sad, Grateful, Guilty, Fearful, Tired, and Sleepy to the original 8 moods (Joyful, Calm, Hopeful, Energetic, Creative, Reflective, Anxious, and Frustrated). As I used the application, I couldn't help but admit to myself that I was too happy when I worked on version 1 of the application. That is why it did not cover a wide enough range of emotions.

I remember visiting the site to add my own daily entry after a long and busy day. Frankly, I was tired and half-asleep, but there were no options for that. I decided that I had to make this second version more robust to handle a wider range of emotions, including negative ones too.

Authentication System Implemented

Yes, you heard that right. You can now create an account, log in, and have your entries stored in a database. This way, you can go back to view your entries without feeling obligated to make them public. You can also toggle between making your entries public or private as often as you wish too!

Tailored Quiz Generation

You can now generate quizzes: 10 questions per quiz with a combination of multiple choice questions, true/false questions, and fill-in-the-gap questions. If you generate the quiz from the quizzes tab, they will be based on your most recent entries. However, you can also select any entry from the public collage or your own personal entries and generate a quiz based on it. Cool, right?

Connect and Message Other Users (With AI Corrections!)

You can now connect with other users of the application and send messages to them! You see, I wasn't joking when I called it the social media of language learning. But that is not the best part.

The best part is that each message you send will be automatically evaluated and a correction will be provided for any grammatical errors you make. Then you can choose to send the corrected text or your original version. Now in the settings tab, you can turn off the learning mode. In that case, a button will appear beside the message box which allows you to check for errors for any specific message you wish to confirm.

This is by far my favourite new feature.

Other Notable Updates

There are other minor updates that make the experience smoother:

Word limits instead of character counts: The default minimum is 20 words, but you can change it to as low as 10 words in your settings. The maximum word count is 200 words, but you can set a personal maximum to a lower amount.
More robust progress indicator: I added a more engaging progress indicator to encourage you to type more.
Auto-save functionality: I implemented a feature that stores your writings automatically in the editor, which allows you to restore the draft of a previous writing if for any reason you are not able to complete it when you begin.
Personalized messages: The personalized message is more personal too since it actually acknowledges your own username!
Detailed analysis option: Every entry you submit will be evaluated, and then you have an option to request a detailed analysis when viewing your corrections, which offers a more detailed breakdown.
Direct OpenAI API integration: I got rid of any Make dependencies since I know I mentioned in this blog post that we don't actually need it. Now we have a direct OpenAI API integration to replace the Make.com webhooks for better performance and reliability.

Why the Connect and Messaging Feature?

Now let's talk about the reasoning behind integrating a connect and messaging feature. When I wrote about my french journey here, I mentioned that I was talking with a native French speaker who I connected with on ConversationExchange.com to help me improve my French. In return, I help her improve in English.

Here is why that doesn't work for me: while it makes sense that I should be willing to help my conversation exchange partner with English while they help me with French, one thing that takes away is the full immersive experience I am trying to get while integrating French into my already 'Englishified' lifestyle. Helping someone with English ends up being a distraction because it is hard to decide how much help to give versus expect. I just find that I am not exactly getting the experience I hoped for with it.

If other people decide to use this application, I will get the chance to practice writing without relying on the person I am texting to correct me. AI becomes the middleman that takes care of that. I also get to talk to multiple people about various topics depending on shared interests without relying on just one person to be willing to have conversations across multiple areas of interest. Now I could have also gotten multiple conversation exchange partners but that takes us back to the problem of not getting an immersive learning experience.

The Current State (95% Done... For Now)

Oh well. The app is 95% done right now. I may leave it at that number for a long time because I have a feeling I will keep making more and more updates to it. Right now, the UI looks mostly good, but I still need to do a bit more work to improve its overall readability and fix some contrast issues across certain themes. But I'm on it!

Try it out here and let me know what you think!

Anyways, as always, thanks for reading!