Pay What You Want English speaking course of the streets, Free Range English, launches in London

June 7, 2015 - A new web-enabled, social learning, face-to-face virtual English school has opened in London, the most competitive English language teaching destination in the world. It's called Free Range English and every lesson, from start to finish, involves the use of local English speakers, handheld devices, social media, and, no classrooms whatsoever.

Learners reserve a place in a class for free online, turn up at the meeting place, are given some free specially designed learning materials to use on their smartphones and tablets and then practice the language from the lesson with friendly members of the public. At the end of the lesson they are invited to pay what they want or, put another way, what they felt the lesson was worth to them.

The classes start in quiet places and cafés, utilise public spaces and every learner walks away with real recordings of their speaking performance to listen to again later. The improvement in their speaking skills is often so dramatic that they are encouraged to share their first and last recordings as 'before and after' evidence of their success. The school is probably the only one in the world that uses real recordings of students to promote its short courses.

Unlike most technology startups the methods and expertise behind Free Range English took years to develop and hone. Jason West is the CEO of Languages Out There Ltd, the company behind Free Range English.

"We started teaching students on the streets of London in 2001 and developed our methods and learning content from trial and error. Over the years we have slowly stripped away the last vestiges of conventional language schools whilst adding appropriate use of handheld technology in a way that actually enhances the learning outcome for students. We now have a web-enabled English language course product that produces far superior speaking improvements over shorter courses that teachers are happy to do on a Pay What You Want basis, because the learners can feel and hear their improvement after each lesson. We hope it will also empower and reward good teachers far more fairly than the status quo."

The teachers, who largely self-organise using the Free Range English cloud-based booking and availability system, get to keep all of the money they earn and can then Pay What They Want to the company as a content license and marketing fee.

If things go well in London expect to see more locations soon.