Octalingo
Octalingo is a Federation educational technology company which produces apps for language-learning and provides language certifications.
| Type | Public Company |
|---|---|
| Founder | Eric & Veronica Fjelstad |
| Headquarters | Capital C.D. |
| Services | Language courses, Language Tests and Certifications |
| Website | Octalingo.com |
On the primary app, users can practice vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, listening skills and interactive short stories. Octalingo offers over a 100 total courses across over 30 distinct languages, from Vaaran, Frakanic, Keltic, Norgsveltian and Nys'tat'en (Norgsveltian dialect.) It also includes a small variety of fictional and constructed languages. The company uses a freemium model with over 500 million registered users. Duolingo offers a premium service which eliminates advertising and offers more features. Octalingo offers Frakanic Test certification program which is on the recognized list of certifications from the Federation.
The company also published literacy app for children called Octalingo ABC, and the company is working on a math app called Octalingo Math which aims to act as a homework app for schools across the Federation.
History
The idea for Octalingo was initiated near the end of 2007 in Republic C.D. the capital republic of the Federation of the Southern Coast in a coffee shop by a language professor Éric Hauet and his co-worker Veronica Fjelstad after a discussion about how diverse the country's languages are and how expensive and time consuming learning different languages.
The project was sponsored by the 'Committee of Languages in the Federation' which heavily funded the early development period of the app. The founders of the Octalingo wanted to keep it as a nonprofit organization and provide free certification programs however the committee pushed for adapting a more freemium model to minimized cost of running the app. Eventually the app source of revenue was by paid language certifications testing, advertising and a subscription service.
Services
Octalingo app
Octolingo language courses are built upon the concept of a "Mangrove tree". Trees are composed of skills and short stories, which the skills focus on the specific aspect of the target language while the short stories provides one to test ability to understand. The trees are split into different vocabulary and grammatically based, with leaves on the tree representing colors, idioms, relations and objects. As such the branch builds the foundation while the leaves spread out the Skills are composed of six levels: levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Legendary. Users progress through levels on skills by practicing the lessons a certain number of times, usually 2 to 6, depending on the skill. Users also have the option to "test out" into the next level on a skill. Users also have the option to test out of entire units within a course. When users complete a lesson or test out, they are rewarded experience points. Users are also tested on prior knowledge in future lessons as lessons will call back to previously learned words and expect the user to be able to apply them in new sentences.
Octalingo provides a competitive space, within in the leagues, people can compete against their friends or see how they stack up within the country. With the higher leagues competing against the world in random select groupings of 80s
Business model
Most language-learning features in Octalingo are free of charge, but it has periodic advertising in both its mobile and web browser applications, which users can remove by paying a subscription fee or invite links. This feature is known as "Octalingo friend" and includes benefits such as unlimited hearts (retries), level skipping, no ads, progress quizzes and library of short stories in the languages.