Our Philosophy

Our teaching philosophy grew from an observation made by our CEO, David Kaskel, when he was playing Massively Multiplayer Games in a virtual environment with others from around the world. In particular, David noticed that within the span of a few months a German player made astounding progress in English. Around this time, David was learning Italian in the classroom and took a trip to Italy, noting that talking to people in real situations, for example asking for directions or ordering food in a restaurant, allowed him to make significant progress.

These two experiences confirmed for us that learning by doing is the best way to perfect one’s language skills and that a virtual world could serve as an ideal environment for effective language learning. This led us to develop our virtual city (“English City”), a place that provides the most realistic situations in which to speak English short of going to a real place. You might even say that English City is better for learners than a real English city because ours is populated by native English speakers and teachers whose only goal is helping students practice their English.