English Attack! Kicks Off Sign-Up Beta At The Next Web in Amsterdam

Amsterdam | Published on: April 28, 2010

English Attack! Launches Sign-Up Beta at The Next Web in Amsterdam http://pressdoc.com/p/0001el

Online English learning start-up English Attack! today announced the opening of its sign-up Beta. From now on the English Attack! site at www.english-attack.com is open to all visitors. Registration, which is free, remains required. The service, which is designed to help the two billion English language learners worldwide to improve their English through online entertainment, has been in private (invitation-only) Beta since end-March 2010.

Critical reception to the English Attack! concept has been enthusiastic so far, with the start-up achieving a finalist slot at the recent Tech Crunch event in its home town of Paris; a win at the recent Seedcamp Paris event; a top-20 finalist slot at the pan-European PLUGG start-up competition in Brussels in March; and now a finalist slot at The Next Web event in Amsterdam, where the company presented itself today in the context of the event’s PayPal X Startup Rally.

Created by two entertainment executives – Paul Maglione and Frederic Tibout – with international backgrounds in the publishing, television, videogames, and internet industries, English Attack! was established on its founders’ conviction that education would be the next big industry to be transformed by the web, following the internet-driven evolution of the information and entertainment industries. The ambition of English Attack! is to bring disruptive innovation into the large but still convention-bound market for English language learning.

Designed for global, mass-market adoption, English Attack! uses a wide range of online entertainment formats to help people improve their English in a fun, friendly and highly accessible Web 2.0 environment. The service, which is targeted at the 15 – 35 demographic (the most resistant to traditional methods of language learning), features interactive exercises based on short (one to three-minute) movie, television series, news and documentary clips and music videos. The site also serves up professionally produced online learning games; user-generated thematic visual dictionary wikis; and community functionalities. The user interface is currently available in English and French and will be localized into two dozen additional languages over the coming months.