Are you a non-native English speaker or English learner wanting to become fluent in English? Are you interested in learning how a tech startup works and all about what goes into running a technology company?
In this day and age of opening your business up to the world, we at LingQ think we’ve got a unique and interesting spin. We are a language learning platform for web and mobile with a context based approach to learning. The fact is, you learn everything better in context and language is no exception. On Day 1 in language class, are you more likely to remember “mouth” if you are asked to learn a list of parts of the body or, if you are taught the sentence, “I put a candy in my mouth.”?
Learning from interesting, authentic content is at the core of our methodology. Motivation is massive when it comes to learning anything. It’s more motivating to learn from content of interest and more effective to learn in context.
The theory behind this approach is well documented but we want to go one step further. We are planning to take a group of English learners and bring them to Vancouver where we will drop them into our workplace environment. They will be surrounded by English all day for 3 months and we will work with them using the LingQ platform, with special guidance from LingQ Co-Founder and hyperpolyglot, Steve Kaufmann (yes, also my dad).
So far pretty straightforward right? Now for the twist. In the interest of context based learning, motivation and making their learning experience real, we will be involving these 3 to 6 learners in our day to day operations. Whether we’re talking digital marketing, SEO, a/b testing, conversion optimization, growth, onboarding and much more, these course participants will be taking part.
Of course, depending on their initial English level, they may not be able to participate fully, at least initially, but that is a big part of the program. We will be importing a lot of content into LingQ on all of the things that we will be working on so that these students will be able to understand and learn from it in order to start to understand the subject matter. Our platform can easily incorporate any digital content into a lesson.
In addition, we will be recording all discussions involving the participants, transcribing these interactions and importing them to LingQ as well. That way our learners will be able to digest these discussions on their own time to understand meaning and start learning the new vocabulary they need. If they are able to participate orally in our meetings initially, that will be great. We will record their efforts, analyze them and send them feedback they can study on LingQ.
For those who can’t participate orally, they will be able to submit written comments after the fact which they can run through our writing correction tutors. The idea being that their thoughts will be corrected and sent back to them in correct English which they can review and learn from.
Once again any written communication they receive can be imported and studied on LingQ. This continuous loop of studying relevant content, replaying and studying real conversations and written communications and analysis of their own speaking and writing, in an intensive 3 month course, should help them achieve a major improvement in their spoken and written English while also enabling them to learn a ton about working in a technology company.
We plan to document this on video and blog about it for all to see. Obviously, we’ve never done this before so it will be a huge experiment to say the least! But, we are confident in our technology and our approach and are looking forward to the challenge.
We are also planning on making the course material including related imported articles, recorded meetings and conversations and instruction on language learning available to all members on LingQ. That means even those who don’t participate on site will still be able to take the same course at home.
What’s pretty daunting actually, is that this means exposing the inner workings of LingQ to the world. We will be recording real discussions on what we are working on, what we are planning and how things are going at the company. The pressure will be on! Of course, by opening ourselves up we’re also hoping to benefit from the input from the course participants but also the crowd following along at home. Input from people much smarter than us is always good!
The first stage in the process is spreading the word about this program and attracting applicants. We have reached out to our network of almost a million members and 75,000 Youtube subscribers as well as on social. We have asked our members to help spread the word. If you know someone who would fit this opportunity, please let them know. You can find the criteria for applying here.
The timeline is short, we hope to have all applications in by April 5, 2016 and have chosen our winners by April 15th. The course will start on May 16, 2016 and run for 3 months in our Vancouver office. The course will be free, but participants will have to get here and look after themselves while in Vancouver.
If you can’t make it yourself, please check back in May as we start documenting the process. Or, take the course on LingQ. We look forward to sharing this process. In the words of Spock, “For everything, there is a first time, Lieutenant.” We are very curious to see the results..!
