Alelo’s Technology in English Showcased at the White House
Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) October 06, 2015 -- Dr. Lewis Johnson, president and CEO of Alelo Inc., was one of four experts invited to present at a White House symposium on Technology in English. Also presenting were Prof. Greg Kessler, Director of the Language Resource Center at Ohio University; Dr. Katherine Nielsen, Chief Education Officer at Voxy; and Mr. David Fay, Regional English Language Officer at the U.S. Department of State.
The objective of the meeting was to promote collaboration in the use of technology for English language learning. A select group of 24 representatives from government, industry, and academia were in attendance. The meeting was headed by Richard Stengel, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and was organized by John Mark King, Regional English Language Officer at the U.S. Department of State.
There are 1.5 billion learners of English worldwide, but many lack access to high-quality learning experiences. In fact, many teachers of English around the world do not speak good English themselves. As a result many learners have limited exposure to conversational English and limited opportunity to develop their listening and speaking skills.
Dr. Johnson demonstrated Alelo’s virtual role-play immersive simulations for English language learning, adopted by Voice of America and used in many countries around the world. Alelo’s solution allows learners to practice their conversational skills in simulated encounters with artificially intelligent animated characters programmed to respond in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways.
The system incorporates Alelo’s unique speech-recognition technology trained on a combination of English learners and native speakers, which provides English learners with practice experiences that are at an appropriate level of challenge. Alelo’s staff of anthropologists interviewed recent immigrants to the United States to identify aspects of American culture that newcomers found surprising and difficult, and integrated them into the role-play scenarios.
Alelo’s virtual role-play technology meets a critical need for English language learning solutions that empower both learners and teachers with feedback and analytics. As Dr. Johnson observes, “Many English teachers worldwide don't speak good English themselves. Virtual role-players with native accents can help fill the gap.”
About Alelo Inc.
Alelo’s mission is to help workers learn to be more effective where it counts.
The company’s products are education and training breakthroughs grounded in proven pedagogy and social-science research that teaches effective communication and collaboration across generations, cultures, mindsets and organizational levels. They use a virtual role-play technique in which learners play different roles in computer simulations of real-world conversations, without risk of failure from making mistakes. It encourages learners to play both sides in a conversation as a way to become more adept at perspective-taking. Perspective-taking is the ability to understand a situation from the perspective of another person.
Lewis Johnson, Alelo Inc., http://www.alelo.com, +1 310-574-7500, [email protected]
Share this article