Press Release 03/05/09

The English school of the future has no school building or classrooms, and it isn’t even in Second Life.  It’s Out There.

London, UK, just got the first Meetup.com real English school; made possible with some innovative teaching and learning materials.

Is this the end of the language school as we know it, all fusty classrooms, old style course books and boring cassettes, that despite their staid and sometimes dodgy image, form part of a global industry worth billions of dollars?

Pearson, the world’s biggest publisher just paid US$150m for some bricks and mortar in China.  How 20^th century!

Now social networking technology and innovative real world English teaching materials have made it possible for English teachers everywhere to quickly and inexpensively set up in business on their own and earn some much needed extra cash.  They don’t even need a classroom to do it and they could get a full return on their investment after teaching just two classes.

Languages Out There, a web-based English teaching and publishing company based in the UK has worked out that by using Meetup.com and their own unique lesson plans, teachers can recruit students, schedule classes, get paid online and teach engaging and memorable lessons without need of a language school.

The downloadable course materials, called English Out There, involve learners being taught some new language in a café or quiet public place and then get up, with their teacher next to them, to go and practise the new language with complete strangers in public places, shops, museums, galleries and parks. The lessons are proven to aid memory, boost confidence and improve fluency.  They’re also not boring!

Meetup.com helped Barack Obama to mobilise lots of grassroots support in his successful presidential campaign last year.

Jason West, founder of Languages Out There, says “When I saw Meetup.com I got very excited. We now have over thirty English learners in our taught lesson group and more than fifty in our structured language exchange group. So far we’ve really just done dry runs with a lesson on shopping. We used the coffee shop in John Lewis Oxford St to teach and then the shop for the task, both times without a problem. There is no reason why teachers can’t use any premises that are set up for public use, after all, they will just be having a coffee with some friends and looking at a few photocopies before interacting with shop staff like normal customers do, won’t they?”

Teachers are able to teach anywhere at anytime, charge what they like per person, get paid online and keep all of the fees themselves without having to pay for space which is one of the two biggest overheads of a language school. The other… is the teachers.

Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.

“Both Obama and his supporters changed the way technology is used in a political campaign,” says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. “He embraced the era of Web 2.0: Meetup was used to organize his base in local communities and promote voter registration drives”. (source: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Government/Presidents-and-Technology/)

There are currently thirty thousand people attending English conversation practice Meetups around the world. Amazingly, the website says there are another seventeen thousand who would like to attend one near them but no one has set one up yet. If that isn’t a cast iron business opportunity for the global ranks of poorly paid English language teachers, what is?

About:

Languages Out There started teaching English Out There in London, in the UK, in 2001. Their real practice English conversation lessons teach learners some new language and then get them using it with complete strangers or native or fluent online practice partners. The technique helps learners to overcome their fear of speaking and boosts their confidence and motivation levels.

In 2006 they started using Skype to make free online phone calls and quickly realised that their approach to teaching English was a perfect fit with the online environment and new web 2.0 communications technology.

Since then they have spent thousands of hours preparing their tried and tested materials for publication for use by teachers and learners both in the real world and online.  The materials are available online now at:

http://www.languagesoutthere.com 

…and cost just 20 pence per lesson plan as part of an introductory annual membership price of only £48 for learners, teachers, schools and institutions.

LOT recently beat Pearson plc to the publication of the first purpose built online English conversation practice course for social networking. They also became partners of Italki.com the second largest language social network in the world. The Italki.com/LOT partnership can be seen at:

http://www.italki.com/static/partners.htm

Italki.com is a free online language exchange and social network and has over 400,000 members, it has also just added a platform to enable online language teachers to be remunerated for their time.

Languages Out There is also just about to publish a coffee table book that has been endorsed by world-famous psycholinguist and multi-million selling author Steven Pinker.

The book uses humour and sumptuous graphics to illustrate why the English language is so difficult to become highly proficient in. It is a call to action for the world’s fluent English speakers and encourages them to help others to practise the language that they speak so well.

The book has been written by top advertising creatives Jaime Diskin and Jae Morrison who work for TBWA in London. 

Issued by Languages Out There Ltd

For more information email: info@languagesoutthere.com or call +44 20 7193 7566.

For further information contact Jason West on 07799 062377 or by email at Jason@languagesoutthere.com or visit http://www.languagesoutthere.com/categories/earn-money-teaching-english

Useful links:

Languages Out There

www.languagesoutthere.com

Meetup.com English Out There lesson

http://www.meetup.com/English-Out-There-London-Intermediate-3-hour-taught-lesson/

Meetup.com English learners globally and those looking for an English Meetup

http://esl.meetup.com/