Edtech startup, Glite has launched an app designed to help intermediate and advanced-level English speakers to become genuinely fluent.
Behind the launch sits one of the world’s biggest tests of English for learners beyond the beginner stage, already taken by more than three million people and generating 140M data points used to train the AI models that power the app.
“We’ve created a unique English learning app for people who already speak English. If other apps are for day one, we are for day 1,000,” said Vassili Philippov, co-founder and CEO of Glite.
“Glite is built for intermediate learners, with several years of English behind them. They can hold a conversation and pass an exam, but still cannot follow a film without subtitles, read a novel without a dictionary to hand, or feel fully confident in a work meeting.”
More than two billion people worldwide are learning a language, and many have already cleared the beginner hurdle.
In the US, of the roughly 68 million people who speak a language other than English at home, around 13million already speak English well, according to US Census Bureau data. Glite’s target learner sits inside that gap: comfortable enough in English to get by, but not fluent enough to stop trying.
Shortage of teachers
That gap is opening at the same time as a shortage of teachers. UNESCO estimates the world needs 44 million more teachers by 2030 just to keep pace with current demand. Glite aims to close that gap for intermediate and advanced English learners by mapping what an individual learner does and doesn’t know and deciding what they should learn next.
Philippov added: “The most magical moments in machine learning and AI usually come when people have found a way to use a lot of data.
“We’ve applied that to language learning, which, in a globalised world, grows more and more important, but at the same time there is a distinct lack of people to teach those learners. Glite fills that gap.”
Glite’s roadmap does not stop at English. Building the AI models behind the app required a subject with enough learners to generate tens of millions of individual learning journeys, which is why languages, with roughly two billion learners worldwide, were chosen as the starting point.
