Ideas

There are lots of online resources for language learning. E.g.
http://babbel.com/

Can you compare your plan to the existing sites and services?

Babbel, UniLang, Phrasebase, MyHappyPlanet are all "crowdbased". They count on the crowd solving everything and making exercises. Problem is that I have found very few FULL language courses.

Chhib is for someone who really wants to learn the language. "Easy" languages like English and Italian is one thing to teach, they have no cases and pretty simple grammar. But slavic languages like Russian, or sign languages like Chinese, that's a different story.

For small languages, like Croatian, 4.7 million inhabitants, or Lithuanian, some two millions, the crowd isn't big enough for that critical mass.

There need to be real language teacher (payed) behind to maintain and always work with the actual course material. There is no fast and easy way to languages.

What we would do is to try to automatize previously unautomated ways of learning, say the text comparer. Previously you'd always need to have a teacher correct your translated text, this would make the teacher unnecessary, lowering the costs, making it free, benefiting the students.

Sorry to say about these sites which all have very beautiful goals, they suck, nor do they work. Try taking a year and learn a language from scratch from these inadequate services.

How about finding a teacher in the country and using skype?

vanhees, yes, good suggestion, that's one of the points with the service.

Hmm I'm learning Croatian and I understand what do you mean.
'More difficult' languages demand far more intensive learning process, which imho is unlikely to be achieved by most free language resources available on the net.

Do you plan to have curriculum / curriculum suggestions for both students and teachers?

Actually what I do like with http://babbel.com/ is that they have ripped the Rosettastone concept with "immersive" learning by showing images and listening to the words and all that. What I also like is that they've focused on the big languages making them working only with them, which will yield a good resultl (Rather than having a spread curriculum: two lessons on Croatian, five on Swedish etc)

If you by curriculum mean some sort of plan of learning, yes. What I thought was to have at least one responsible teacher for each language, getting paid by some kind of revenue sharing model.

that's not a bad idea. might have been done but it's ok

mashersmasher: please tell me if you happen to stumble upon it. honestly, I haven't seen a decent alternative to the big ones. (Berlitz, Rosettastone etc) Especially not in the "opensource" community

Dejan, I'd suggest dropping a small sample on your landing page. It looked like you were heading towards a detailed example with your...

"Teacher inputs a text in two
languages: The children are going to school every day. Djeca idu svaki dan u skolu. The teacher will be able by similar wikimarkup as in the hole grammar be able to enter syn"...

And then you were cut off by the idea size limitation?

You could even use Google Docs itself as an easy mechanism to allowing some collaboration on this, and seeing what kind of responses you get. Or a Wiki. Future stuff like students paying teachers for direct help could be experimented with in parallel with seeing how people actually use the prototype site.

Could be a good resource. It's going to be expensive though... experienced teachers and high-quality educational resources don't come cheap. Success will depend upon your ability to persuade people that your service is worth paying for!

GordonMcDowell, good suggestion: http://docs.google.c...=dgrm3t4f_28f3pgg77c is a development document with further details.

PhilipH, yes, I know there's a challenge in making it all break-even and further. It's just that in this "long-tail" economy and times of globalised nationalism (Chinese with all its variants, Albanian in Kosovo, Basque in Spain, Croatian and Serbian and Bosnian, there's a long list) combined with tools (the Internet) I see a market for it.

Diasporas across the world have never had it so easy to communicate with their homeland as now. Also it's never been so easy to have teachers in their homelands teaching to the whole world.

Teachers often care a lot for their work, and if they receive shares of the revenue while still keeping the rights for it, they will be very inclined to work with it and perfect it.

What I'm aiming for is that the free resource will be so good that it will be possible to learn a language just from the resource. But because it's so good the site/business earns the trust from its students to go further buying lessons and help.

What costs in languages has always been the human factor, and by using for example the Comparer tool (see the Google Doc) we'll eliminate the human factor from as much as possible. This is what the people at RosettaStone eminently have done with their approach.

not a bad idea, you are working with the free economy.

Actually, if I'd have the means, I'd start this up right away. I already have Lithuanian, Croatian and Swedish teachers up for it.

The main challenge is to work out the payment model. It should be very flexible. All options. Payment by sms, card, invoice, bank-wire. And also options to pay for for example one correction of a text.

Everything relies on the trust of the students. There's no need to lure them into a tricky 12-month account, but there should definitely be those models available.

As someone posted, maybe here or elsewhere, a big problem is about motivation. Myself, I'm learning Italian now, but it takes a lot of effort to after a hard day's work, after making dinner, perhaps a workout, sit down and start studying.

I'm up for suggestions on how to improve the motivation and ease it for the students to make them more inclined to actually study.

http://www.mangolanguages.com is example of a competitor. From the look of it they are skilled and have an alright program. Haven't seen their grammar exercises. I personally don't like it though I admit it's good for other students.

Their problem is their payment model, I think. First of all, I don't understand if their 50 free lessons are 50 completed "runs" of lessons, or if it's 50 different lessons. What is good is that it's on a per language basis, still... Well, I don't like unclear payment models.

The price is alright I guess, $10/$15 per month. But what they lack is the possibility for interaction, which is what matters in the long run.

Of course people can always find random people on MSN, Skype or whatever to talk to, but they're not skilled teachers that can precise and know WHY you make certain problems.

http://lingro.com/ This is so cool, just found out about it. Check it out. It's like an overlay dictionary. You upload a file or enter a website and then the Lingro engine overlays a dictionary from that language to a specified language.

Say I'm learning Swedish, I go to lingro, enter Swedish newspaper http://www.dn.se and select Swedish-English. By clicking on the words on the page lingro looks it up in a dictionary for you. That way I can practise my Swedish without despair when encountering a completely unknown word.

Also it can remember the words for your wordlists.

This is the GREATEST piece of free software I've found on my quest to find a Chhib site (so I don't have to develop it myself).

Ey guys, I've actually found a service that does much of the things I'm talking about: http://www.lingq.com/signup/

They have a function called Write http://www.lingq.com...tro/Write/Write.html which does what my Comparer tool is supposed to do. You pay to gain access to points with which you can have a teacher for example correct your submitted text.

Think I'm gonna try this one out.

This is one of the exercises I want to add to the Chhib system: http://kurser03.cfl....fir04/m01/a5/o07.htm

The thing with Chhib is that there will be thousands of these available so you can practice over and over without having to just run the same exercises, thus learning them by heart, without actually having to think -- which is bad.

I think you could have a lot of consumers, because if cheap enough and qith enough quality, people would try to learn some languages, just for hobby.

I like the idea. I love learning new languages, even if just to become a functional tourist, and if I were planing a trip to an utterly alien land, I might just pay for some intensive tutoring, considering that Japanese, Croatian and the like is tough to come by here in Wyoming...

Nickonomics101, nice to hear.

I have to add, though, my aim is more for a complete course to reaching fluency rather than plain phrases for vacation purposes.

The only problem is that learning is hard, so maybe is boring if not animated with videos, pictures, and more. Maybe you can also record normal classes to let users watch them.

http://blog.b92.net/...o%20Speak%20Serbian/
Interesting post (in English) on Serbian B92 about the difficulties in learning Serbian.

Noelius, Chhib is not for casual learners. Perhaps I should emphasize that. Chhib is for people who really want to learn a language and who value a thorough course. The users/students are expected to put a lot of effort and time in their studies.

I think I need to rephrase the pitch. The students are the same students who would be willing to go on a study semester abroad for 4 months but perhaps don't have the meanse. Or they've been away already and want to indulge more once back home.

I could need help with suggestions for the business model. How can you make a viable business model that is adapted not just for the western world with 20 €/month subscription fees, but rather for the WHOLE world including Asia, all the Americas and Africa - thus creating a long-tail effect worthwile?

Sounds like you've thought long and hard about this and have a strong desire to make it work. Good for you!

Hindi and Arabic are becoming more popular here - I would suggest adding them. (OK I really want Hindi myself ;)

I like this idea - I am unclear about the subscription fees.
Would it be one monthly fee gets you one language at your own pace or at a set pace? Can you do more than one language at a time? And is there a discount for multiple languages? Or is it one rate for use of everything on the site?

PhilipH, yes I have and do. :) What's crucial though is to discuss the idea and find out the sore points and correct them.

JustMe, initially I thought "no subscription fees" as in, once the need arises for a teacher involved, i.e. correction of a text or a skype conversation or a quick grammar class, then there has to be a transaction. Subscriptions would be for the really keen users to give them discounts. What I've experienced myself though is that monthly fees lock the user to the site, and I dislike that a lot. Often it happens that I have a week when I have time to study, but I don't want to pay for a full month or even a year. Fees look good on paper, on business prospects, but they are note beneficial for the students. There's a need for a very flexible payment model.

HUge vision.. goodluck!

-focusdriven