Helping world to learn Chinese
Lingo Bus follows parent VIPkid’s footsteps, to expand in B&R economies
Unlike little students who go to special educational institutes in the United States to learn Chinese and say phrases like xiexie (Chinese for thanks), Oklahoma’s Ella, 5, relies on her laptop and internet access to do the same. Her Chinese teacher connects with her from across the Pacific Ocean.
The preschool girl learned Chinese online for six months. Then, she sprang a pleasant surprise on her family by showing off her proficiency in the language that is considered very difficult to learn.
By just observing Ella learn from Lingo Bus’ online sessions, her 2-year-old brother picked up quite a bit of Chinese as well.
The online Chinese learning platform, according to the kids’ mom Heather Oaster, is magical. “I’m amazed at how well they both have picked up some of the language already at their very young ages.”
Ella and her little brother are among some 4,800 kids across the world who learn Chinese on Lingo Bus, a subsidiary of VIPkid. While VIPkid delivers live English lessons to mainly Chinese students, Lingo Bus specializes in Chinese language.
Launched in August last year, Lingo Bus has since been following its parent’s footsteps to go global.
“Expanding our overseas business will be a major task this year. We aim to develop a total of 50,000 paid users and over 10,000 skilled Chinese teachers in three years,” said Mi Wenjuan, founder and CEO of VIPkid.
Different from offline courses, Lingo Bus is like the online version of the Confucius Institutes, providing one-on-one personalized Chinese lessons for children aged between 5 and 12.
Kids can learn Chinese through an online course where each lesson with a Chinese teacher lasts around 25 minutes. Such teachers are carefully selected. They should at least have a bachelor’s degree in teaching Chinese as a second language, a Mandarin proficiency certificate, and minimum one-year teaching experience.
The class is combined with interactive videos and songs, which can help students to get involved in the learning environment. Students gradually learn to sing a song effortlessly, without even realizing it, or build their Chinese vocabulary with each passing day.
Also, children in these oneon-one classes do not feel nervous or any peer pressure.
Lingo Bus said it has enrolled over 4,000 registered members so far from over 46 countries and regions including the US, Canada, Germany, Japan and Malaysia. Nearly 6,000 Chinese teachers have also applied to join the company’s faculty.
Lingo Bus foresees a bright future for itself given China’s growing influence as a global power, which is expected to continue to encourage foreigner children to pick up Chinese-language skills.
Like its Chinese-focused subsidiary, VIPkid is building on its success in China to quickly set up its own global network of online platforms that teach English.
It has started its own research institute, with the first batch of funding exceeding $10 million, headed by US senior researchers including Bruce McCandliss, an education professor and cognitive neuroscientist from Stanford University.
“I hope to seek out new opportunities for what we can learn in this new innovation, where 200,000 children in China are being tutored systematically by 30,000 teachers in the United States. This has never happened in history before,” he said.
The Beijing-based startup also believes technology is important and key to globalization.
“Our core competitiveness is the integration of teaching with advanced technology such as cloud computing, big data and artificial Mi said.
Big data and AI are two main technological innovations that the Beijing-based company uses in its platform, which digitalizes and personalizes English education.
Teachers can adjust their teaching method using facial recognition technology, which studies students’ facial expressions to analyze their mood during lessons.
Similarly, virtual reality technology, which uses vivid pictures and 3-D scenarios, helps in delivering immersive learning experiences for students.
“We believe the Belt and Road Initiative will give online education platforms more momentum toward connecting global educational resources. We will endeavor to promote online Chinese learning in more countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative this year,” Mi said.
Expanding our overseas business will be a major task this year ...”
Mi Wenjuan,