We are an early stage company launched by a group of people who thought there had to be a better way to learn languages. Almost from the very beginning we realized that most language learning methods don't work for a few reasons. They lack common sense. They're obsessed with grammar, gimmicks, or ideas from the 19th century. And they are extremely boring.

 

It is also evident that interactive, network, and media technologies are transforming learning. Guided by our sense of what works, and using the best technology available, we're developing a better way to learn languages: the kind of language learning products we've always wanted for ourselves.

We work in teams, have no titles, and sometimes people join us on a short-term basis to contribute to specific projects.

 

Our company is Miami-based, although much of the work takes place in different locations. We have a large production office in Latin America, some of us work in China and Canada, and, most importantly, a network of friends from prior ventures are scattered throughout the world.

 

We know that simple, common sense solutions can make an enormous difference to anyone trying to learn a language. By combining this grounded approach with the amazing technologies continually coming online, we’re getting closer and closer to a perfect future.

There is a model of learning that has stood the test of time for thousands of years: one-on-one coaching involving constant interaction between student and tutor, taking place anywhere, and organized in such a way as to create the most memorable learning environment. One thinks of Socrates walking around, prodding and questioning in a process so engaging that it still resonates throughout the world more than two thousand years later.

The world's physical realities have made this approach virtually impossible to reproduce on any large scale. Instead, hundreds of students crowd halls while passively consuming impersonal lectures. More often than not, education has been constrained by location, time, and the limits of existing physical resources.

But these constraints are crumbling. Developments in technology that are taking place all around us offer the possibility of transforming the learning process. Combining universal access and thoroughly personalized, interactive engagement with anytime, anywhere learning that enhances the quality of content is a realistic possibility today. This is about learning experiences that can be digital, personal, virtual, mobile, interactive and memorable all at once.

We're only too aware of how little faith learners have in technology in education. As avid adopters of new software products, we've had our share of disappointments while trying to use repetitive software systems that lack direction, multi-media programs that fail to exploit the potential of rich media, and robotic, web-based systems that afford no flexibility and offer little memorable, engaging content.

While exploring much of what's available, we've found that while the tools might be new and shiny, there hasn't been a lot of thought for how to put the learner and the tutor—rather than all the new technology—at the center of the learning experience.

Our efforts at Fluenz are dedicated to perfecting a seamless digital reproduction of one of the oldest learning models. What's powerful to us is the moment of one-on-one, personalized, interactive learning that leaves a lifetime impression on the learner. Non-guided web navigation on e-learning platforms and PowerPoint thinking in a lot of educational software tend to replicate what's wrong with mass-produced learning.

And while engaging, beautiful design is often dismissed as irrelevant in education, we simply beg to differ.