English Attack!, a site designed to make learning the English language a fun, social experience, has completed a 12-month open beta period and has now launched officially.
The service, which launched its open beta at last year’s The Next Web Conference, uses movie clips, music and games as part of a fresh approach to language learning. The company behind the site, France-based Entertainment Learning, believes that many online English language learning methods take an “Abstract and linear” approach. By comparison, English Attack! focuses on immersion and motivation.
In fact, you might say that it ‘gamifies’ English learning, if that word wasn’t such a cliché. Aimed at the 15-25 age group, there are scores and badges to be earned as motivation when users complete tasks. Learning methods include ‘Video Boosters’ (interactive multimedia exercises based on short video clips from current popular culture), ‘Photo Vocab’ visual dictionaries, and games which are designed to be both repetitive and replayable to help hammer what you learn into your long-term memory. Meanwhile, the ability to communicate and make friends with other users is designed to make the service more social.
The basic English Attack! site is free to access, with a virtual currency being used to buy time-limited access to much of the content. This is because Entertainment Learning believes that traditional subscription payment for online language education can exclude many young people who may not have the finances to commit to regular payments.
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English-Attack! is available to use, adapted for 20 different languages, here.
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