My French Teacher Said, 'Oh My God, I Think I'm Going to Cry'
Published: October 29, 2025 • 7 min read
Now you probably read the title and are wondering why this post is being grouped as technical, but please, keep reading. I promise it will make sense.
The Moment That Started Everything
It was on the 10th of October, and I had my usual 10am French class that morning. I was doing a specific exercise with my tutor where we read an article together (which was pasted into a Google document), then he highlighted specific sentences in that article and my work was to rewrite those sentences. Just a way of practicing recalling vocabulary and constructing meaningful sentences.
I worked through the sentences little by little, and as I finished rewriting the second sentence, I hear my tutor, who while holding his hands to his face, say: "Oh my God Prisca, I think I'm going to cry."
You see, he made that statement because he's been part of my journey getting to this level from when I could not even construct sentences, and the progress I happened to be making moved him.
The Thing About Being Called "Smart"
You see, for most of my life, I've been called smart, and I don't write that here to appear conceited. I believe people called me smart because I excelled at subject areas like Mathematics, for instance, which a lot of people notoriously struggle with. Now if those people were to judge my ability to retain information from History or Biology textbooks, they probably wouldn't think I'm so smart anymore. But I do like reading about Sociology, Economics, and Psychology, though. I digress.
The thing is, French made me feel dumb.
Learning French was hard. It was really, really hard. It humbled me. It exposed me by showing me areas of weaknesses that I had never evaluated or thought of (maybe I'll write more about this in the future), but hopefully I am not sounding too dramatic over language learning.
And all of this was despite the fact that I really wanted to learn the language.
You see, at the beginning, when I was at an A1-A2 level and reading and watching videos of short stories (which were mostly fun and interesting), I thought this was going to be a walk in the park. Then I started trying to cross the A2 threshold into the land of B2 and... WOW!
But anyways, I did it eventually, and you can read more about that story here. I consider myself to be at a B1-B2 level right now, but I've been reflecting on the different aspects of language comprehension and expression (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) and how I'm progressing in each area.
One area I know I still struggle with quite significantly is writing, mostly because of the numerous grammatical errors I still make. I enjoy writing, but I enjoy writing in English. I haven't reached the point where I can put pen to paper and have my ideas flow in French without making significant grammatical errors, but I want to get there so badly.
So I Built an App to Solve My Own Problem
So I decided to build an app to solve my own problem. Remember at the end of my previous blog post, I mentioned that "I had this new project idea sort of banging in my brain, taking form so rapidly, begging to come to life to solve a problem that I am actively dealing with"? Well, I finally brought it to life.
You see, as I get busier and busier trying to build projects, learn new skills, and refine my existing ones, it is becoming harder to dedicate time to practice writing French. I don't want to overwhelm myself by setting ridiculous daily standards for practicing writing. I believe in achieving a minimum baseline, and if that baseline is achieved consistently over a long period of time, I know I will make progress.
My Minimum Baselines for French
I am doing (or should I say trying to do) more than stated below, but here is my minimum baseline:
Speaking: My minimum baseline for speaking now is speaking French when I have classes with my French professor. Honestly, I may have increased that as I am going to attempt recording videos where I explain technical concepts in French (check out my case study work for more on that).
Reading: My minimum baseline for reading is that all my devices are set to French, and I have this sentence in all my Claude projects instructions where I spend most of the day working: "For every response you provide to me, 3-5 sentences should be in French to help me learn French on the go." That way, I am always being exposed to new vocabulary. And honestly, sometimes Claude gets a bit too enthusiastic and I get an entire response in French, but hey, can't complain. I'm learning anyway. You can probably see that I have started to incorporate French versions of some content on this portfolio website with the same goal.
Listening: My minimum baseline for French listening is to listen to at least 15 minutes of French content every day. This has largely been by following along with Alice Ayel's content. However, I also listen to random podcasts and sometimes watch French movies without subtitles.
Writing: My minimum baseline for French writing was to text my Conversation exchange partner at least once a day, but I find that that is too minimum given that I still have a long way to go.
Introducing: The French Writing Playground
So here is what this app is going to do:
- Every day, I am going to open the app and simply write. Anything. Any thought. Any sentence. Nothing crazy.
- I have set a minimum number of words accepted by the app, and this number will increase as time goes by, but the goal is just to reach this minimum threshold (this becomes my minimum baseline)
- The application will take my sentence, and using a Make Workflow, it will retrieve corrections for that sentence if there are errors or simply suggestions for how I can improve it, while grading that sentence according to the CEFR standards (A2 - C2)
- I will have the option to add my sentence to a "Community Collage" and come back to review it in the future
- Of course, anyone can use the application
The Mood-Based Theme System
Now there are a few more things that are interesting about the application. First, I know it's common to have a light and dark mode on most applications, but why restrict themes to these binary options? What if the theme changed depending on your mood? Wouldn't that be awesome?
Well, that is exactly what this application is doing. When you load it, the first thing it requests is how you are doing, giving you about 8 different options to choose from. Then you will watch the application adapt its theme with colors that match your mood. It then goes off to a Make Workflow to retrieve a personalized message depending on your mood, as well as a short quote in both English and French.
Now depending on when you test out the application, there may be few or significant changes made to the workflow. In that case, I would most likely write a new blog post highlighting those changes.
The Current State (And What's Coming)
Now depending on when you view this application, you may notice a few issues. I wouldn't list all the bugs I still plan to fix in the app, but the most noticeable one is simply with the UI, as well as noticeable contrast and readability issues. You may also notice that the application is very slow at retrieving information from the Make Workflow, and who knows, there might be even more because I am yet to test the application on mobile view. But hey, I just started working on this application 2 days ago.
Don't worry, I plan to resolve most of the issues today.
The Vision vs. Reality Gap
But you know, I experienced something interesting in the process of building this application. I could have sworn I had the picture of the UI of what I was trying to create so, so clearly in my head. But what you see here right now, on the morning of the 29th of October, does not match the vision in my head.
Why am I struggling to bring to life what I see so clearly in my head?
Well, I have decided to perform an iterative experiment to fix this. When I am done with it, the application should match the picture in my head, and I am pretty sure I will write a new case study based on the outcomes of that experiment. I am genuinely so excited to get started on it, so I will stop writing right now and get to work.
If any of you use the app, I hope it provides an enjoyable experience for you!
P.S. This is why I grouped this as "technical." It started with an emotional moment in a French class, but it ended with me building a full-stack application with mood-based theming, Make automation workflows, and CEFR grading systems. That's the beauty of being a developer: when you have a problem, you can build the solution.
Thanks for reading!