Sarah Gontijo of hello-hello

At long last I figured out how to listen to these pod casts in China. Sarah claims her methodology is “better” at the end of this pod cast. Better than who? Better how? How I wonder is “her” methodology unique? Is there some secret recipe that others of us in language teaching don't have access to?

She also claims that they are “the” pioneers of mobile language learning (yes, she used the definite article). In point of fact, people have been developing mobile apps for years. Check out what Chinese Pod has done. They were talking about this fully two years ago.

I congratulate Sarah on her success. But, I would temper your claims a bit if you want to be believed by people in this industry.

Yes, yes, yes, I understand. You can't be everywhere when you start a new business. I will allow a little latitude, but the statements she was making go to core benefits. If she said, we are here to make people happy and our students are the happiest students on the planet then I might have let it go but she went further…. she implied that her ACTFL sauce has significant ingredients others don't as well as that she practically pioneered mobile learning. These statements don't wash….

My guess is that the content of her program is extremely traditional. My guess is that what sets her apart is her access to great programmers, her capacity for hard work, her business savvy, and being able to self finance so she can start by charging nothing.

I'm guessing that content wise, especially since she has partnered with a very traditional ACTFl, that her materials are also very mainstream and traditional. Nothing bad here but content wise nothing very remarkable either.

Add one more to your waiting list!