Posted on

EnglishCentral.com Launches AI-Powered conversational English learning chatbot

First ever English learning tool where learners can “say anything”

MiMism is the world’s first AI-powered, conversational English learning tool, where learners can say anything and get instant feedback on their vocabulary, grammar, nativeness, fluency and more. 

Current chatbots for English learning use fixed dialogs, limiting learners to a fixed set of responses.    For that reason, these “chatbots” are less effective helping students learn to speak English.   With MiMi, users can speak freely, like they are speaking to a human, and get instant feedback.

How does it work?

  • A library for over 15,000 video lessons — covering 7 levels (from CEFR A1 to C2) and over 50 topics covering business, travel, media and more–   now each contain discussion questions that serve as the prompt to initiate conversation with MiMi.
  • The learner’s answer is transcribed into text, auto-punctuated, auto-capitalized, and displayed in the UI.  Learners can manually edit the text before requesting feedback
  • MiMi provides automated, instant feedback for fluency, nativeness of pronunciation, vocabulary level, and grammar accuracy

MiMi is powered by our IntelliSpeech platform, which has been uniquely trained on hundreds of millions of lines of speech data gathered from non-native speakers in over 100 countries. To learn more about our Teacher-Machine Learning Loop, click here. This makes MiMi more accurate than even Google’s speech assistant on non-native speech.

Our vision

Being able to speak English allows people to expand the opportunities available to them, whether it be in their work, traveling the world, or pursuing their pastimes.   The problem with most computer-based, English learning solutions is that they don’t effectively teach learners to speak, which is the key skill that is in demand.

EnglishCentral provides the most effective and affordable way to learn conversational English combining artificial intelligence with quality tutoring. Our vision is to provide everyone in the world with an affordable, personal English teacher.

MiMi is a key element to deliver on our vision.   This version of MiMi integrates with our library over 15,000 authentic videos allowing users to discuss the videos with MiMi in their own words.  Our plan is to continue to develop MiMi’s natural language understanding to become the world’s most capable virtual English teacher, delivering an affordable and personalised learning experience to English learners everywhere.

Human teaching remains at the core the EnglishCentral experience and we now have over 600 EnglishCentral teachers. MiMi  doesn’t replace them; instead, she provides a great way for learners to warm up for live lessons, helping learners build confidence and motivate them to take lessons with live teachers.  MiMi gives learners an opportunity to practice speaking English on their own, receive valuable feedback, gain confidence, and ultimately improve faster.   

What’s Next For now, learners can say anything but MiMi is limited in her responses.   Over time, MiMi  will gain more dialog capabilities, allowing for more interactive conversations.  By the end of the year, we will be able to drive a more personalised conversation, based on a user’s interest or specific learning objectives.  Eventually, she will be able to teach and assess a learner’s ability to perform tasks, such as ordering a Pizza, or booking a hotel room.

Call or email us to find out more about EnglishCentral.com, becoming a BETA teacher or academic pricing.