Chris Lonsdale

For most of his adult life, Chris Lonsdale – one of our founders, who is a psychologist, linguist and educator – dived deep into the area of second language learning looking for the technologies of mind, brain and body that would make second language learning both fast and fun.

Applying what he learned along the way he was able to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese in just six months in the early 1980’s, following which he also became fluent in Cantonese.

He is a best selling author, having encapsulated his experience in his first book: “The Third Ear: You CAN learn ANY Language” followed by “How to Learn Any Language in Six Months” (《6个月学会任何一种外语》) which was penned in Chinese.

Chris’ approach to Second Language Learning is succinctly presented in his TEDx talk titled: “How to Learn Any Language in 6 Months” which has over 35 million views on YouTube alone, and more than 100 million views across multiple platforms.

In order to realise the practical application of leading edge knowledge about how to learn languages, Chris went on to build the Kungfu English learning system designed for Apple’s iOS platform to help Chinese speakers overcome the many difficulties that Chinese speakers have in learning English. https://www.kungfuenglish.com

Chris and his team successfully addressed many of the problems of learning a second language, showing significant improvements over traditional approaches. These problems solved included helping learners to :

* generate and maintain interest to remember new content easily,

and

* to quickly master daily communication in their new language.

While his influence on language learning in North Asia escalated, learners still faced challenges like feeling shy when speaking with real-life coaches, the fear of embarrassment when speaking more generally, or having a personal learning schedule that doesn't align with pre-scheduled coaching times.

As far back as 2010 he had wanted to create an environment where people could learn and practice whenever and wherever they chose, being in full control of their learning experience. He wanted to create a way to help people who are easily embarrassed to practice speaking freely and confidently. He decided that the best way to do this would be the creation of an interactive speech “robot” that could communicate easily in human language with each learner.

Sadly – the technology that would enable this was not available in 2010.

Then Chris and John Ball met!

The dream of a digital conversation partner using real human language could become reality.