MADRID, SPAIN and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire) - British news provider the Guardian, global publisher Macmillan Education and busuu.com,
Europe's largest online language-learning community, have entered into
an agreement to offer busuu.com's users a powerful new learning tool for
improving English skills.
From today, more than 1.5 million busuu.com users across the
world will be able to access Guardian news articles (updated on a daily
basis) via the online learning platform and query unknown words using an
integrated, on-the-spot dictionary reference feature provided by
Macmillan, www.macmillandictionary.com.
Users can practise and develop their English skills
through reading the articles and then posting their opinions. Their
written comments will then be made available for correction by native
English speakers within the leading web 2.0 online community.
The material is fully integrated within busuu.com's existing interactive language courses
and will enhance the platform's current offering, where more than
25,000 writing exercises in 7 languages are already reviewed and
corrected every day by native speakers worldwide.
"The Guardian is delighted to provide busuu.com's English
learners with the latest news from around the world. We are excited to
be part of a process that will stimulate discussions on diverse topics
among users globally and contribute to their language skills. As guardian.co.uk
is one of the highest-traffic English-language news websites, it makes
sense that our news can be used to help English learners understand
current affairs in context," says Gerard Baines, Head of Syndication and
Rights at the Guardian.
"Our award-winning online Macmillan English dictionary is a
one-stop reference for English speakers around the world. Aligning our
double-click dictionary tool with daily news articles within the
busuu.com language-learning environment seems to us the perfect solution
for students, and an excellent example of technological innovation
within an educational website," says Finn Kirkland, Business Development
Manager for Macmillan Education.
"Our aim is to drive innovation in the language-learning
process," says Bernhard Niesner, CEO and one of the founders of
busuu.com. "What could be better for improving English skills than
reading up-to-date, topical news articles, querying unknown words in an
instant with an online dictionary and having comments corrected by a
native English speaker?" he adds.
In just 3 years, busuu.com has developed interactive language
courses in 7 different languages, available to more than 1.5 million
users around the world. Members have access to free and paid-for
interactive online courses combined with social interaction within the
worldwide community. The start-up aims to revolutionise the way people
learn new languages and wants to bring the fun back into language
learning.
About busuu.com
busuu.com is Europe's
largest online community for learning languages with more than 1.5
million users from all over the world. They have free access to
audio-visual online courses for learning Spanish, German, French,
Italian, Portuguese, Russian and English.
Language skills can also be directly improved together with
other native speakers from the community via an integrated video-chat
application and peer-to-peer text corrections. Consequently, each user
of busuu.com is not only a 'student' of a foreign language, but also a
'tutor' of their own mother tongue.
The start-up was founded in Madrid in early 2008. It was a
UNESCO partner project during the International Year of Languages in
2008 and has received several prestigious awards, including a Silver
Lion in the International Marketing Festival in Cannes, the European
Language Label of the European Commission and the Innovation Award of
CeBIT.
The name of the site comes from the Busuu language of
Cameroon, which according to an ethnological study from the 80s is
spoken by only 8 people.
More information: http://www.busuu.com/press.
About the Guardian
The Guardian is one of the UK's leading daily titles, founded
in 1821. It delivers liberal journalism to a global audience via its
website, www.guardian.co.uk.
The Guardian has a long history of editorial and political
independence, and is unique among major British daily newspapers in
being owned by a foundation (the Scott Trust, via the Guardian Media
Group).
About Macmillan Dictionary
The award-winning Macmillan English Dictionary was first
published in 2002. Crafted by teams of lexicographers in Britain and the
United States, it has as its source a corpus,
a database containing millions of examples of English as used around
the world. Extensive analysis of this corpus of real spoken and written
text, using state-of-the-art software, has allowed the dictionary
writers to reveal fresh information about how and when words are used.
The dictionary has been regularly updated, and the latest edition, presented free online for the first time, includes a thesaurus, fully integrated into the entries.
www.macmillandictionary.com