Thirteen skills for talking about what you do. Foundations introduces three core verbs (faire, aller, vouloir); Building blocks systematises articles, negation, preferences, and time; Lexicons covers objects, places, functional writing, and possessives; the Capstone integrates everything into a single invitation-negotiation-plan exchange.
"To do / to make" — the umbrella verb for sports, hobbies, and most leisure activities. Irregular, with one big surprise: vous faites.
02"To go" — three different stems, plus the contractions au, à la, à l', aux for destinations.
03"To want" — invitations, requests, intentions. Three stems and the politeness ladder up to je voudrais.
Identifying things, denying identifications, and saying "not anymore" with ne…plus.
05Indefinite articles un, une, des for objects. The verb of existence il y a. Negation collapse to de.
06du, de la, de l', des — for unspecified amounts. Under negation, all four collapse to de.
07J'aime, j'adore, je déteste — preference verbs and the contrast connector mais.
08Il est dix heures (current) vs C'est à dix heures (scheduled events). The quart, demie, moins system.
Naming, describing, and stating ownership. C'est mon sac. C'est un cahier rouge. C'est le stylo de Marc.
10Where you do what — nager à la piscine, voir un film au cinéma, lire à la bibliothèque.
11Greetings by context, message structure, SMS abbreviations. Bonne année, Bon appétit, RDV à 19h.
12My, your, his/her — six forms for three singular possessors. Possessives agree with the noun, not the owner. Liaison rule before vowels.
The XP and streak system isn't here for its own sake. Each mechanic is designed to reinforce a specific learning principle the preface refers to: retrieval before exposure, spaced practice, and consolidation through retakes. Here's what each one is doing.
XP for every attempt — including wrong ones
You earn +10 XP per item, whether you get it right or wrong. This is deliberate. The pretesting research (Pan & Chua, NUS 2026) shows that the act of attempting an answer — even an unsuccessful one — strengthens later memory. Rewarding correctness only would push you toward avoiding hard items; rewarding the attempt encourages you to engage with everything, which is what produces the memory benefit.
+50 XP for completing a skill
A small bonus for finishing all items in a skill. The structure of finishing matters: it's the moment your brain commits the corrective feedback, after several attempts, into a more durable form.
+20 XP per improvement point on retake
This is the most important XP source for your learning. When you retake a skill and beat your previous best, you earn extra XP per point improved. Retaking a skill spaces out your encounters with the material — and spaced retrieval is one of the best-evidenced memory consolidation strategies we have. The improvement bonus is the system's way of saying "this is the work that counts."
Streak multiplier — for showing up regularly
Submit at least one item on consecutive days to build a streak. Your daily XP is multiplied:
×1.0×1.1×1.25×1.5×2.0Daily contact, even brief, is more effective than long sessions clustered together. The multiplier rewards the rhythm, not the volume.
Freeze tokens — for the days life happens
Earn ❄️ one freeze token at every 7-day milestone (max 3 stockpiled). If you miss a single day, a freeze is automatically used to keep your streak alive. The freeze exists because the goal is sustained engagement over six weeks, not punishment for missing a day. Streak anxiety undermines the very thing the streak is designed to encourage.
The leaderboard (coming later in the semester)
Will rank by long-term engagement and retake-improvement, not first-try perfection. The students who do best aren't the ones who got everything right immediately — they're the ones who kept coming back and improving. That's the trajectory this system is built to reward.
In short: XP rewards attempts, streaks reward spacing, and improvement bonuses reward consolidation. Each one is a piece of the cognitive science the preface points to.