Tag Archives: efl

EDUKWEST Ep. 61 with Travis Millman of EnglishCentral

In this week’s EDUKWEST I interview Travis Millman, VP of product for EnglishCentral Inc. Although still quite concentrated on the Asian market, I think it’s a nice product worth having a look at from both teacher and student side.

EnglishCentral consists of three main areas, one is to watch authentic videos dealing with different topics such as politics or entertainment. Second is to learn all relevant vocabulary, also structured according to topics for instance introductions or culture. The third element is to learn to speak or more specifically how to pronounce words.

Looking from a student perspective, I like that it’s pretty customizable and that I don’t have to watch this or that video but define my fields of interest and thus get only relevant lessons for me.

Read more and watch the Interview on EDUKWEST →

TelCos teaming up with Education Startups in Asia. Model for the Rest of the World?

A couple days ago I read on TechCrunch that the Japanese NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) invested $1 million in the ESL startup EnglishCentral.

Back in February Nokia (not really a TelCo, I know) and Pearson signed a partnership that would preload ESL learning content from Mobiledu on all new Nokia mobile phones on the Chinese market turning each phone into a mobile learning device.

And last but not least NTT also acquired a 29.7% stake in goFluent back in January. I will interview Christophe Ferrandou, Founder and CEO of goFluent, on EDUKWEST tomorrow. The company offers business English courses via telephone and internet to customers worldwide and is the European leader in this sector.

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