Why is prochain incorrect?

Deleted. Already answered by Cécile.

Hello Cécile.. thank you for the clarification of when to use suivant.. but, if I am getting this right.. you are agreeing that jeudi prochain would be correct in the context of this or next.. as the time frame is properly defined.. but my problem is that Kwiziq has marked that answer incorrect and demanded d'après... if there is a this Thursday, ce jeudi, jeudi prochain has to mean next Thursday.. which is what I am trying to say.. otherwise, if it is Monday, when is jeudi prochain?

Hi Mark,

I deleted my previous offer because I thought that Cécile had covered all of the options.

However, if we were to write "prochain jeudi" this would mean the following Thursday as in a series of Thursdays going forward.

Prochain can be used on either side of the day and changes the meaning.

Hope this helps.

Jim 

Thanks Jim.. clearly I am expressing myself poorly.. if it is Monday and I say "ce jeudi et le jeudi prochain " does or does that not mean this Thursday(3days) and next Thursday? (10days).. and, if wrong, what does it mean?

You don't use the article with jeudi. The definite article is only used when specifying every Thursday (i.e., Thursdays)

It has been a while since this question was asked but I recently completed this exercise and had the same question as Mark regarding why jeudi prochain was an incorrect answer for this question. It seems the answers so far haven’t addressed the confusion stemming from the different uses of the words “next” in English and “prochain” in French. 

In the context of the sentence: Tu veux dire ce jeudi ou …. 

In English we would say, do you mean this Thursday or next Thursday? As a native English speaker we naturally want to directly translate the “next” in this sentence to “prochain” in French. But that’s the problem. In this context, prochain means the first Thursday after the current day. So if this question is being asked on Tuesday, jeudi prochain means in two days. Of course in English if it’s Tuesday and we say next Thursday we mean the Thursday of the following week. That’s the difference.

Answering this question by asking ce jeudi ou jeudi prochain is incorrect because in this context (imagine the question is asked on Tuesday) they would have the same meaning. 

Hopefully this helps someone.

I can’t help thinking that Kwiziq is being a bit dogmatic about the distinction between jeudi prochain and le jeudi d’après. Surely French speakers don’t all see this the same way, witness e.g. https://www.margatraductions.ch/que-veut-on-dire-par-vendredi-prochain/. This dogmatism is a bit odd given their surprising lenience in other topics (e.g. in considering “je me rappelle de Pierre” correct French usage). Surely if someone opposes “ce jeudi” to “jeudi prochain” as in the case at hand, everyone will interpret the speaker as referring to the Thursday immediately following the time of speech and the next one after that, respectively.