You’re up late watching your favorite French flick.
All of a sudden, you hear that familiar ping from your phone.
Your date from last week just slid into your messages, asking how you’re doing.
You’re about two notches better than good, but not quite great and definitely not ecstatic. You don’t want to give the wrong impression.
Oh, and your date only speaks French.
So how will you answer?
As your finger hovers over your phone, you curse the air, wishing for some sort of app or website that would enhance your vocabulary.
Oh happy day!
There are several online quizzes that help you test and improve your word repertoire, ideal for all language levels. These vocabulary quizzes are fun, easily accessible and, best of all, they add nuance to your speech so you can declare your happiness in dozens of different ways.
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The Perks of Using Vocabulary Quizzes to Learn French
Vocabulary quizzes are perfect for all levels of learners. Even native speakers don’t know every word in their language, so there’s always more to learn!
Here are some compelling reasons to try out these French vocabulary quizzes:
- Language learning can require a lot of cognitive and physical effort—mastering the French “R” can wear your tongue down! Vocabulary quizzes are an efficient solution for those days when you still want to learn a thing or two without exerting yourself.
- Even if you’re learning incrementally, those gradual advances will compound. If you only learn three new words a day, that’s—hold on, let me get my calculator—1,095 words a year. Not bad!
- Vocabulary quizzes are incredibly flexible. You can open an app or website when or where it best suits you.
- They’re also great practice for actual tests, which can otherwise be daunting.
6 Stellar French Vocabulary Quizzes to Have You Speaking Like a Parisian
LingQ
LingQ will improve your ling-o.
This quiz slowly gets harder as you progress, making it a nice option if you feel rusty. The questions include audio pronunciations spoken by an actual human—no more sounds bites that make you think your microwave is talking back. They involve either filling in the blank or identifying a word’s English equivalent.
Once complete, you’ll enjoy a cool feature that tells you approximately how many French words you know based on your score. It might be hard to believe that your repository spans thousands upon thousands of words, but don’t underestimate yourself—after all, there are plenty of ways to send an angry message to your ex.
FluentU
FluentU can get that vocab into your mind… and help it stay there! Accessible from a browser as well as iOS and Android devices, it’s all about personalizing the learning experience to suit you.
Every FluentU video comes with its own associated quiz, so you can get some seriously personalized learning done with this program.
FluentU uses a fill-in-the-blank style of quiz, supported by fully voiced audio clips, multiple sentences for plenty of context and more. So you can, for example, watch a French movie trailer that you’re excited about—then take the quiz to make sure you understood and retained all the vocabulary you learned in the video!
FluentU also includes an integrated dictionary for nuanced, contextual definitions, so you won’t make the mistake of asking a grocery clerk which aisle contains the Brazilian trees (not speaking from experience….).
Furthermore, you can set up your own quizzes by creating a flashcard deck of vocabulary words that you want to get a better grip on. FluentU’s video prompts are based on your history, helping to address weak spots, while the flashcard feature stores vocab for future review. Plus, the spaced repetition style of quiz perfectly spaces out your review of certain words that you’re scientifically likely on the brink of forgetting.
Sign up for a free trial and you’ll be one step closer to bilingualism, multilingualism or now-you’re-showing-offism.
Government of Canada’s Website
Great for intermediate and advanced learners, the Canucks have come through with a long list of multiple-choice vocabulary quizzes. The topics are as wide as Québec, ranging from social media lingo, expressions containing specific words or subjects and expressions for specific holidays, among others. The page also explores certain types of words, such as neologisms, synonyms/antonyms and other word categories. Check out the page on Anglicisms to learn more about false friends.
The best part: If you don’t understand the topics, you can just switch the page to English at the top right. Some quizzes offer explanations of the answers, further advancing your proficiency.
The Canadian government also provides a cool Language Navigator (available at the bottom of the page), where you can find answers to common language dilemmas.
Quizz Biz
With entries from as far back as 2009 and as recent as a few days ago, this is a massive compendium of user-generated multiple-choice vocabulary quizzes. The topics explore everything from food and animals to words starting with “C” and three-word terms.
An average score and the number of past players accompany each quiz to give you a sense of the difficulty. If you’re feeling adventurous (or masochistic), try “2994 Vocabulaire,” which has an average score of only 17%. On the bright side, you’ll never forget what “mauvaise réponse” (wrong answer) means if you fail horrendously. Comparatively, “Les + faciles” (the easy) filter yields dozens of quizzes that are simpler and tailored for beginners.
Beyond Quizz Biz’s abundance, the quizzes are great because of the variety of question types, such as “What does this word mean?” and “Which word best describes this concept?”
Like a particular user’s quizzes? Click on their profile and see which others they’ve created.
You Learn French YouTube Channel
There’s a YouTube channel for everything.
Beginners will love this channel’s multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank quizzes, which are subtitled in English and don’t contain too many words. Lazy language days have a perfect companion with You Learn French, because you can start a video and follow along at a leisurely pace with the slow videos. The videos are also all under 10 minutes, a millionth of the time it takes to understand the difference between “en” (in) and “dans” (in).
In case you were wondering, the videos cover a broad array of topics: spelling, verbs, objects and colors, among many others. Pronunciations from native French speakers aid with progressing your verbal proficiency.
If you have more time on your hands (or shoulders), the channel also features many lessons that are even shorter than the quizzes.
Memrise
You can expect your proficiency to “rise” thanks to Memrise. And because of Memrise, you’ll become a better mem… not sure where I was going with this.
Anyways, as you could probably tell by its name, Memrise emphasizes memorization by applying a spaced repetition technique for interval-based learning. The app/website uses short blurbs of people speaking, and you choose the words they say. Memrise also requires you to write out how to say certain expressions, or pick an audio file that corresponds with the word in the question.
Even if you think you’re at the lowest beginner level, don’t sweat it! You choose your learning level. You can see the average learning time and the number of registrations for the courses, which comprise at least a dozen sub-lessons and are developed by either Memrise or users. Instead of learning by level, you can also pick courses based on specific concepts or accreditations, such as the Edexcel GCSE vocabulary list.
Moreover, Memrise emphasizes community and competition: You can create groups to which you add courses for other members to take; leadership boards accompany the courses to rank your score.
It’s free, but the pro version includes more features, such as tracking for your learning.
So there we have it! Six vocabulary quizzes that’ll have you swooning through the streets of Paris as if you’re unstoppable. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy these offerings. And if not enjoy, then at least cherish. Or maybe relish. Or adore.
If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to learn French with real-world videos.
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