LangBot

A gamified language teaching chatbot. LangBot empowers language teachers thanks to its content creation platform.

❝The limits of my language are the limits of my world.❞ Ludwig Wittgenstein

LangBot's MVP won $20,000 from Facebook's messenger bot challenge and its Beta was launched 6 months ago getting over 180,000 users all over the world who've had 10 million interactions with the bot. LangBot's monthly user growth averages 80% since its onset. 

The problem we are committed to solve

Despite all the existing solutions learning a new language is still very hard. Classes aren’t personalized, personal tutors are expensive and schools have a very high dropout rate. Most digital solutions (apps, websites etc...) focus on memorizing vocabulary and less on learning through conversations. These solutions also tend to be out of reach of a large part of the younger generation in the developing world who do not speak English, only have a low-cost smartphone and are very data conscious.

Our solution

We are building a Facebook Messenger chatbot which acts like a personal language tutor and uses proven techniques like gamification & spaced repetition to help users learn faster. LangBot is available to everyone on Facebook Messenger and users can start chatting with it without installing any new apps or going through yet another sign up process. Being able to use the content just learnt in an authentic role-playing chat with the bot is another unique feature. Users can also get translations for messages from their friends without leaving messenger. Directly accessible on Facebook messenger, the Bot teaches on a familiar platform and users only require a smartphone and a 3G connection. 

We also partner with schools allowing them to integrate LangBot to their Facebook page and we provide them with an easy-to-use interface from which they can create their own lessons and keep track of their students' progress. LangBot also gamifies their classrooms by awarding points, badges and creating competition through a local leaderboard for the school. Our content creation platform enables language teachers to craft lessons in local languages and reach millions in Africa and around over the world. This tool is unique and has already been adopted by our partner the Alliance française in Addis-Ababa (4000 students/year) which is currently using it to develop French lessons available in Amharic.

How will that change the world

Speaking a new language opens up a whole new world of opportunities. In Ethiopia for example, speaking French can dramatically enhance your professional career and give it an international twist. NGOs, embassies, big companies, international institutions are always looking for more talents who can master several global languages. The foreign language acquisition process is long and demanding. But just like any project, getting started is what's the most difficult. LangBot makes that first step easy, fun and fast.

Recent advances in AI have made chatbots more feasible. Using this technology to teach languages offers a whole new range of possibilities.

Having a chatbot which acts like your personal tutor on a familiar platform revolutionizes the learning experience. It becomes fun, personalized and you can freely chat or do role plays to practice what you just learned.  

Our LangBot for schools solution is unique. It empowers teachers by giving them the tool to build their own chatbot with their own content. In that sense, it strengthens the relation student-teacher especially with the younger generation, already accustomed to content digitalization.

The increasing affordability of smartphones and some countries providing data free access to facebook messenger allows us to reach people in areas where learning a new language is only a luxury afforded by the few.

Technology also helps us provide a personalized learning experience where students 

• can learn at their own pace
• receive immediate feedback on their mistakes
• chat with the bot for practice using what they learned
• earn points, badges and compete with their friends to get on the leaderboard, making the learning process feel like a game

Over the next 12 months, we aim to:

- Launch with our partner, the Alliance Française in Addis Ababa, the first language teaching chatbot built by teachers to the destination of their students. The bot will teach French with Amharic and potentially reach thousands in Ethiopia.

- Expand our B2B model to more French language institutions across the continent.

- Develop an English for French speakers curricula and add it to the Bot. This will aim at 28 African countries where French is a national language.

- Reach the target of one million unique users (currently 180k).

Expand within Africa and beyond: use our blueprint and school partnerships to offer a large variety of languages.

Adapt our technology to make it suitable to the teaching of other disciplines.

We believe VR is the future of EdTech. We want to create an experience where users are placed in different scenarios in VR with an avatar. The data collected  from LangBot chats will be our most powerful asset in training a model that anticipates and has a relevant answer to what the user might say. This will enable us to push the experience closer to a real-life language immersion.

Users currently access LangBot directly through Facebook Messenger. They discover us on the messenger bot store (over 1000 new users/day). Retaining these users has been one of our biggest priorities and we're constantly working on improving the bot and providing more content.

Our project with the Alliance française Addis Ababa will showcase the relevance of our solution for schools. The sharing of good practices within this 800 campuses network will help us contract more Alliances and expand to other global cultural institutions. Retaining these customers will mainly lie in ensuring good customer service and constant improvements to the product.

We launched our beta 6 months ago getting over 180,000 users so far who've had millions of interactions with the bot while learning French. The bot also helps users communicate with their friends on messenger by providing translations for over 65 languages.

We're allowing our first B2B client to integrate LangBot into their Facebook page and we are giving them a tool to create and manage their own content. The bot also creates a local leaderboard for the school to gamify their classroom. School s can track their students' progress and communicate directly with them via Facebook Messenger.

Our target is to reach 1 million users by the end of the year through our partner schools and organically from the bot store. The current growth rate makes us very confident in our capacity to achieve this goal.

In Africa, lower smartphone prices are driving a digital revolution, allowing mobile phone users to access the internet at unprecedented levels. Focusing on the two most demanded languages of the continent, French and English, places us in an ideal position for a consequent growth.

Globally, with 1.3 billion monthly active users on Facebook messenger, the potential is enormous.

LangBot is the synergy of two main expertises: EdTech development and language acquisition.

Nathnael worked as a lead developer at various tech companies creating apps and websites including a gamified learning platform for high schools. He has also been building chatbots since the onset of the phenomenon. Rémi is specialized in the acquisition of French as a foreign language and has kept key contacts within the global french cultural network.  

LangBot is currently part of the South African EdTech incubator Injini. It has added a precious strategy framework to the project and facilitated its access to important African EdTech players.

Our focus at the moment is our B2B product. We let schools integrate LangBot into their own Facebook page providing them a tool to:

• create and manage their own content
• track students progress with the lessons 
• train the bot to answer FAQs on their Facebook page (inscription dates, tuition fees etc…)
• communicate with students on messenger through their own Facebook page (cultural events broadcasting, information about registrations, class cancelations etc…)

LangBot also creates a local leaderboard to gamify the school's classrooms. We charge the schools $3/student/month whether or not they intend to make profit out of it. Our first partner on that model is producing French lessons for Amharic speakers on our platform and has decided to sell access to large institutions they have partnerships with in Ethiopia. By delegating the selling process to schools, this revenue model allows us to focus our efforts on the development of the product and its content.

The Alliance Francaise alone has over 800 campuses around the world and our goal is to expand into these campuses and other institutions with similar structures such as the British Council, the Goethe Institute and more...

We believe the world class mentors and partners from Solve can help us to:

• improve our technology
• ameliorate our teaching approach
• strengthen our organizational processes
• bring LangBot to educators all over the world and allow more teachers to deliver their lessons on a medium where the youth already spend the majority of their time: messaging apps.

High level technology mentorship in an area which is experiencing rapid evolution is also a key asset we want to have on our side.

The funding could help us provide more lessons in local languages which are mostly ignored by the big players.

One of our biggest barrier is the cost and time associated with producing quality content. If Solve can connect us with more content providers or investors who can fund content development, it would not only help us reach more people, we could also do it faster.

Despite huge advances in natural language processing, it is still very challenging to train a chatbot to anticipate and give relevant responses to everything a user might say. We believe MIT is the best partner to keep us on top of this ever advancing field.