EnglishUp

My personal vocabulary trainer

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Inspiration

Our inspiration comes from our team members: one web developer, one language teacher, and two children willing to learn English. The language teacher couldn't find any suitable software for learning new words that require full activity from the student and follow his learning rhythm. So she decided to make a new platform with help from the web developer.

Project overview

EnglishUp is a platform for effective learning new words in English or any other foreign language. It's designed as a tool that helps students to overcome the biggest problem in learning a foreign language – adoption and active use of new words. This platform does it in an amusing and stimulating way, with an emphasis on active and interactive student participation.

Analyzing the new conditions due to COVID-19 pandemic and taking into account many years of experience in working with students, the language teacher noticed:

  • Online teaching generally puts students in a passive position, which calls into question any progress in learning a foreign language.
  • In general language teachers lack a tool that would connect them and students when learning and explaining new words.
  • Students are not motivated to learn new words, because old techniques such as rewriting the same word repeatedly lead to boredom and lack of motivation and don’t give long-term results.

What it does

When creating the platform, we were guided by the following:

  • The platform must be adapted to each student and his level of knowledge and pace of learning.
  • New words are best adopted by repeating them at different time intervals.
  • Students learn new words better if they write them and not just see them.
  • Self-assessment of knowledge encourages students' responsibility and strengthens the motivation for further learning.

EnglishUp offers all these requirements:

  • It combinates modern technologies with the 2 best ways of learning words – card method and periodic repetition.
  • Just 5-10 minutes per day is enough to achieve fantastic results in vocabulary enrichment and ensure safe progress
  • It follows the knowledge and rhythm of each student.
  • It’s possible to access it from all devices - smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers.
  • It motivates students to continuous work.
  • Can be used for learning any foreign language.

How it works

The teacher enters the words in the EnglishUp database according to the school program (equivalent to writing the words on the board).

The student accesses the EnglishUp with his password from any device - smartphone, tablet, laptop – and it then becomes his personalized EnglishUp. A word appears in his mother's language, and he should write the same word in the language he is learning. If he doesn’t know the word, it appears in a foreign language and is accompanied by a sound and phonetic pronunciation as well as an appropriate sentence with the current word. If he wrote the word correctly, he is praised. The student then decides when he wants the word to reappear, choosing on a scale from 1 day to 3 months, depending on how confident he is in knowing the current word. If he is completely sure that he knows the word very well and he won’t forget it, he clicks on BUY and that word will not appear again. He can also keep track of how many words he did that day. If he wrote all the words that the teacher entered, he is also praised. Students can be engaged in regular usage by sending a notification to the devices after prolonged period of inactivity.

Market and competitors

There are no personalized applications on the market that follow the pace of each individual student. Existing applications typically offer bilingual word lists or cards that are repeated indiscriminately each time they are started, They put students in a passive position, so these don't show interest in the long run. Further language teachers lack in general a platform on which they could show and explain to students the words that fully follow appropriate program for a certain age and grade, and that enables students to practice new words.

Challenges

The biggest challenge in this project was evolving to the current user interface, clean, fast to use, with all necessary functions and of course intuitive.

Business model

EnglishUp isn't just a platform that could be used as a link between students and teachers. It could be used by anyone learning any foreign language all around the world.

There are 3 possible models of this platform:

  1. Teacher-Student-EnglishUp – intended for teachers and their students as a primary tool in mastering new words in a foreign language
  2. My EnglishUp– intended for older pupils, students and all people who learn any foreign language and who want to practice words of their own choosing and at a pace that suits their knowledge
  3. EnglishUp-Plus – already filled word bases divided into levels from A1 to C2. The advantage over all other applications is that the student determines himself when which word will be shown to him.

So, there is a wide market for a such platform.

Tech

English Up was built around the Angular framework in front-end. We use Angular animation to make this application more attractive for younger users. The back-end is a typical web server stack: Apache, PHP and PostgreSQL as the database server.

Monetization

Monetization of the platform is planned on to way.

  • "Free for users" version will serve some ads, allowing anyone to learn a new language.
  • The paid version will be offered to every school for a small amount od money. This will be Teacher-Student-EnglishUp version and will for sure add value to the school's foreign language course.
    EnglishUp can easily become FrancaisUp, ItalianUp or DeutschUp.
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