A Hasbrouck Heights native is part of a tech start-up company that aims to help people learn foreign language fluency in 2,000 words through online gaming techniques. Kara Gaulrapp joined the new Philadelphia-based company, Sixty Vocab, last summer right after graduating college as a graphic designer. She said the start-up team of four people all wear many hats and she has since been involved in web design, social media and marketing. Co-founders of SixtyVocab.com are brother and sister, Kevin and Kim Ramirez. The company’s mission is to turn a person’s basic high school Spanish into conversationally fluency. The idea was inspired by years of travel without the skills to confidently converse with locals. The pair designed an online gaming system that quickly builds on existing skills. The design combines the best of digital flashcards with the fun of gaming. The company’s new online game applies memory-improvement techniques to fast-track the language learning process. Sixty Vocab currently offers language learning in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and English (as a second language). Additional languages will be added in 2014. “The idea behind us is if you know 2,000 words, you know 60 percent of a language,” Gaulrapp said. “About 95 percent of high school students who studied a language for four years still aren’t fluent in it and chances are you still aren’t going to remember it. With Sixty Vocab you can be fluent in conversation in three months.” Gaulrapp said the website is able to track the user’s knowledge of a language and instead of teaching words they already know, focuses on words they don’t. Based off user feedback, Sixty Vocab has created an online campaign to launch an app version of their website for phones. Gaulrapp said their users like the website but there was a need for a mobile app. “People are always on their phones and they want to play five minutes here and there when they have the chance,” she said. “While they’re waiting for a bus or on line for coffee they can pick up some vocabulary words. There’s a huge demand for it.” The online campaign can be found on http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sixty-vocab-we-re-going-mobile. –
From NorthJersey.com.
