THE LANGUAGE CHAIN offers an important enhancement to the experience of learning English in London, providing face-to-face Meetups with native language students in total security.
Since October 2008 we have arranged 408 Meetups in 10 languages.
Why your academic institution should take part:
The Language Chain is not a social networking site, our emphasis is on academic improvement in a secure environment so that all students have an equal opportunity to improve their conversational skills.
The concept of language exchange is not new, but The Language Chain has turned this into a resource available to all Universities, Language Schools and Higher Education Institutes in Central London, either for free or as a source of revenue for the academic institution.
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How The Language Chain works
Every academic institution in London is different. In some, such as Higher Education Institutes, most of the students are English but there is not much opportunity for language exchanges as there are few native speakers of foreign languages beyond the language teachers.
Language Schools have the opposite situation - every student there is trying to learn English, but many will have little opportunity to meet any English people at all, apart from their Teachers.
The Language Chain resolves this by getting students from different academic institutions in London together so they can practice converstaion in each others’ languages.
Furthermore these Meetups are arranged with total security - students do not have any contact details apart from the student’s first name..
What the academic institution needs to get started
Your students participating in The Language Chain need to have an email address and a UK mobile phone, and will either be native English students studying another language or overseas students studying English.
If the students require supervision you will need to allocate a study area within the academic institution where the Meetups will take place, with students from within the academic institution or from other academic institutions.
If you are providing places where Meetups can take place, you will need to declare the availability of these venues in a Google Calendar which only the School can edit but which The Language Chain can read.
Registration
Each academic institution has its own account on The Language Chain where it can monitor the progress of its students. From this account you can issue invitations to students to register with The Language Chain.
Each student receiving an invitation email from you is required to complete a Registration Form on The Language Chain which comprises their name, mobile phone number, postcode, School ID, native language and language they wish to improve.
Upon completion the student has access to their own account, which includes an Availability Calendar. This Calendar reads the details from your Google Calendar and displays the dates and times when Meetups can take place. The student declares their own availability on the Calendar.
Every day, at around lunchtime, The Language Chain processes all requests for the next day’s Meetups, either within the academic institution or with students from other educational institutions.
Meetups
The students meet up with a different partner each time (that is why it is called The Language Chain), and are never given any information about the student they are meeting with, apart from their first name (and they can use a pseudonym if they wish). The Language Chain is built around anonymity to protect the students.
The Meetup venue is dictated by the academic institution. If the students require supervision (such as young students in a Language School) the Meetup can be in a room on the academic institution premises. Students of Adult Education Institutes on the other hand require no supervision, so they can meet in public venues (such as cafés) or at the venues of supervised students.
Meetups last an hour and involve each student teaching their native language to the other student for half an hour. The Language Chain encourages AIM Training (Assessment / Induction / Meetup) sessions to give each student a basic understanding of the difficulties encountered by others learning their language.
Students can report on any Meetup (ranking it from 0 to 5), and any negative reports are brought to your / our attention.
The cost of The Language Chain
Free option -
Each student is sponsored for two free Meetups by the academic institution, which must be used within a month. Students who wish to have further Meetups purchase £10 vouchers from The Language Chain for five more Meetups. This option is suitable where the students are able to pay themselves (ex: Adult Education Institutes).
Revenue generating option
The Language Chain is designed to be self-financing. Each student is sponsored for two free Meetups by the academic institution, which must be used within a month. Students who wish to have further Meetups purchase £10 vouchers, for five more Meetups, from the academic institution. These vouchers are bulk purchased at a discount from The Language Chain, so that even if the proportion of students participating is relatively low, the academic institution should soon recoup its initial outlay.
The Language Chain benefits everyone. Students get the opportunity to meet real people (not just students but anyone who is studying their language), and even if their conversation is basic it does not matter.
Each student discovers the joys and difficulties of teaching (and will hopefully treat their own teachers with more respect!), picking up new techniques with each Meetup.
They will also improve their social skills, since none of us has enough experience in meeting a total stranger and immediately engaging in teaching/learning for an hour, and then saying goodbye.
Schools participating will be offering a rewarding experience for their students, especially if this is integrated with AIM training to improve their skills, and perhaps most importantly this can be offered as an extra activity by the academic institution that is either cost-free or revenue-generating for the academic institution.
Contact The Language Chain today!Send an email to
and we will get in touch with you straight away.
Please note that this service is at present only available to educational institutions in the London area.
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