Nous faisons du waterpolo vs Nous jouons au waterpolo?

JanetA2Kwiziq community member

Nous faisons du waterpolo vs Nous jouons au waterpolo?

Nous ________ waterpolo.
We play waterpolo."jouons au" is marked incorrect and "faisons du" is correct. 


Yet your explanation says to use "jouons au" for a sport that you play regularly. "We play waterpolo" means we play it regularly. That's an unambiguous English sentence. There is no other way to translate that. No English-speaking person would use the phrase "We play" for a single incident. They'd say, "We're playing waterpolo." This seems like a bug to me. 

Even the article you link to earlier in this discussion uses "jouons au" for waterpolo. Either you need to explain this better or change the quiz answer.

ETA: In fact, if you type "We play water polo" into Google translate, it says "Nous jouons au water polo." If you google "jouer à vs faire de" you get this explanation:

To remember when to use each verb: if the sport involves a ball, use jouer. If not, use faire.

Someone brought this up 3 years ago. You updated the lesson 2 months ago. This should've been addressed already.

Asked 9 months ago
CélineKwiziq team memberCorrect answer

Bonjour Janet,

I took a look at this test question and I can confirm that both "jouons au" and "faisons du" are both accepted as correct answers. I took a look at your test history and I can see what happened. I've transferred your query via our Helpdesk to give you more details. ;-)

Merci et bonne journée !

ChrisC1 Kwiziq Q&A super contributor

I guess the difference is between "We play waterpolo" vs. "We are playing waterpolo". The first one talks about the general activity, maybe you're in a team and you go to training 3 times a week. The second one talks about being in the pool and playing at this very moment.  With this in mind, it is maybe clearer why faire du waterpolo is preferred. It's a subtle difference, but the flavor is a bit different.

Nous faisons du waterpolo vs Nous jouons au waterpolo?

Nous ________ waterpolo.
We play waterpolo."jouons au" is marked incorrect and "faisons du" is correct. 


Yet your explanation says to use "jouons au" for a sport that you play regularly. "We play waterpolo" means we play it regularly. That's an unambiguous English sentence. There is no other way to translate that. No English-speaking person would use the phrase "We play" for a single incident. They'd say, "We're playing waterpolo." This seems like a bug to me. 

Even the article you link to earlier in this discussion uses "jouons au" for waterpolo. Either you need to explain this better or change the quiz answer.

ETA: In fact, if you type "We play water polo" into Google translate, it says "Nous jouons au water polo." If you google "jouer à vs faire de" you get this explanation:

To remember when to use each verb: if the sport involves a ball, use jouer. If not, use faire.

Someone brought this up 3 years ago. You updated the lesson 2 months ago. This should've been addressed already.

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