MORE than 500 million students could soon be using technology developed by a Glasgow company to learn English as a foreign language.
Micro-Phonics has won a contract to supply its pronunciation eLearning tool to students across Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which includes 11 former Soviet Republics.
Micro-Phonics has signed what is its bigger ever deal with Aggregion, which operates a digital rights processing platform, and major distributor Bookhunter.
The company’s Visual Pronunciation Coach, which was created by chief executive Colin Hamilton, offers pronunciation assistance that works with varying accents and blending phonemes.
It also enables students to sound out complete words, and supports complete sentences.
It offers self-paced pronunciation tuition that supplements and enhances the teaching of English as a foreign language, requiring minimal staff training or disruption.
Consul General of Russia in Edinburgh, Andrey Pritsepov said: “Launch of this cutting-edge tool at the Russian market, open to new modern technologies, will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the company’s development”.
Mr Hamilton said: “I am really excited that my language pronunciation tool is helping thousands of people already in nearly every country in the world. We are helping people achieve better English pronunciation every day, in their work and in their daily lives.”
He praised the “tremendous support” of Scotland’s universities, adding: “Over the past few years, I have had help from Scottish Enterprise. Business Gateway, Interface, Scottish Development International, the University of Strathclyde Entrepreneurial Network, the University of Glasgow, Education Scotland and City of Glasgow College, without whom I would not have reached this level of innovation and achievement.”
Professor Jane Stuart-Smith from The University of Glasgow said: “As an outward-facing institution which is rooted in its local community, working with local companies such as Micro-Phonics is hugely important for us at Glasgow University.
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