English Audio Request

Hello, I'm Yangyang Xi, CEO of Lang-8.
Thank you all for coming today, I hope you find the information in this presentation useful.
Let's go ahead and get started.

First of all, what is Lang-8?

Lang-8 is a revolutionary approach to foreign language learning(acquisition).
Revolutionary how? (or How is it revolutionary? )

Well, it is a website where foreign language learners can come together and correct one another's writing.
This is how it works: Users submit passages they hapve written, which native speakers of the language are then able to review and edit, fixing things like wordking, spelling and grammer.
You can help others and receive help in return.

Let's say, for example, a Japanese user, a French user , or a German user were to something in English
Native English users would then be able to read and correct their entrie using the easy-to-use and intuitive Lang-8 correcton tools.

In turn, when the native English speaker write an entry in the language he or she is learning, the native speaksers of that language will be there to correct their entries.
Since it is a breeze for a native speaker to spot incorrect grammer and ood sounding sentences, our members tend to make fast and frequent corrections for fellow users.

So, Lang-8 is a community of people "giving and taking".

Let's take a look at the actual site.
First, you can register your native language and the language your are learning.
Then, you can write an entry in the languange you are learning.
Here you can shoose the langauge you need to have corrected.
And that's it.

This entry is then automatically posted to the front page of the native speakers.
This block is called "Engries awaiting your correction".

For example, my native language is Japanese so here are many Japanese entries written by people who are learning Japanese.
This makes it especially easy for me to find and access their entries that are awaiting correction and correct them.
You can also add one another as friends and frineds' entries will be shown in another block.

Of course, everything is provided for free.

In the real world there might be some people exchanging languages, but depending on where one lives, or how busy one is, meeting face-to-face and interacting with native speakers can be

difficult. We are often limited by where we live or the number of native speakers we know. Lang-8 overcomes these limitations. Lang-8 does not just crossing borders, but it also provides a

convenient and easy way for people learning new languages and corresponding native speakers to interact with each other through the internet.

We are simply taking advatage of the fact that everyone (well, almost everyone) has a native tongue.

Thus, at Lang-8, everyone is both a student and a teacher.
You might still be wondering how many members actually correct other users' entries.
Often post will get a first correction within 5 minutes - and about 90% of entries will get corrected. (except entries written in English.)

What's also fun and unique about Lang-8 is that by reading entries written in your language by people from different cultures and experiences, you can have fun learning how someone from another culture and language thinks about and perceives the world.

It is very interesting to understand how foreign people think and to see what foreign culture is like.

Though our company is located in Japan, our user are from 200 countries all around the world, and 70% of Lang-8 users are non-Japanese.
Our goal is to provide a worldwide service, not just local, Japanese service.

We already no have entries written in 80 different languages.
Let's see some examples.

This one is written in XXX language by YYY native speaker.
And this one is written in AAA language by BBB native speaker.

・・・

Let's see more data.
There are more than 190,000 Lang-8 users today with over 570,000 entries posted to date.

Some people confuse Lang-8 for a translation service when, in fact, we are a langauge learning service.
Please make no mistake about this.
Translatin requires high-level skills, but correcting sentences is not hard, as I said before, you only have to be a native speaker of the language to be able to easily correct entries.
This contributes to why we have seen much success in our Lang-8 community - because it is just so easy to help others and to have that help reciprocated.

There are so many different languages here!

Lang-8 is the realization of free language-exchange, online. It is the convenience and joy of utilizing instant internet connection, across oceans and time zones, and, more importantly, across the

spectrum of our community's lives and experiences.
Plase come and visit, and see for yourself.

thank you very much,