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2015 Edition

PRESS +MEDIA

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AboutOpen English.Open English is the leading online English-language school serving over 20 countries and continues to expand globally. The company was founded in 2007 seeking to reinvent the English-language learning experience for today’s busy professional by offering them customized 24/7 online-only instruction imparted by native English-speaking teachers. Currently having surpassed 300,000 students, the company’s language program is founded on a guarantee of helping students achieve fluency in the English language in a short amount of time, and have fun along the way. To learn more, please visit www.openenglish.com.

Our Mission

Our mission is to reinvent English learning, using technology to tear down the barriers imposed by traditional learning methods.

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Administrative Offices: Coconut Grove, Florida, United States

Ownership: Privately owned

Type: Business to Consumer

Established: 2007

Website: http://www.openenglish.com

Executive team: Open English’s executive team consists of multi-lingual professionals whose background includes technology, product design and development, sales and marketing, finance and engineering. This dynamic team serves a large network of English language learners from six different offices across Latin America and the United States: Andres Moreno, Executive Chairman of the Board & Founder; Javier Villamizar, Chief Executive Officer; Greg Kress, Chief Operating Officer; Sam Peterson, Chief Technology Officer; Alex Sotelo, Chief Financial Officer; Wilmer Sarmiento, Founder & Vice President of Technology. Industry: Online language education

Business Target: English language learners throughout the U.S. and Latin American countries

Company Growth: Open English has obtained more the US$120 million in investments and has been valued at US$350 million. The company’s growth over the last five years has been impressive: in 2010, Open English had little over 5,000 students; today, the school has served over 300,000 English learners globally.

Curriculum Activities: Live Classes, Lessons, and Practice

MEDIA KIT | QUICK FACTS

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Our new and improved learning platformSimply put, Open English’s goal is to help students succeed. With this goal in mind, Open English is on a quest to deliver the best service through continuously improving its learning platform. After observing over 100,000 students learn with our initial learning platform, we have developed and refined an innovative system to make human interaction more efficient and effective. The recently re-designed learning platform boasts an all-new curriculum, mobile access, optimized study paths and more teacher interaction than ever before. We are ready to service hundreds of thousands of students with our new and improved learning platform. Our demo videos provide a great overview of the platform.

Click the images below to view the respective video clip.

Web Demo 1 - Site Tour Web Demo 2 - Study Plan

Web Demo 3 - Live Classes

MEDIA KIT | NEW & IMPROVED

5STYLE GUIDE

Weekly Study Plan

Open English developed the Weekly Study Plan as a solution to a common question students face, “what’s next?” The Weekly Study Plan guides students through an optimal combination of the three major activities of our curriculum – live classes, lessons and practice exercises. This tool helps to keep students on track so they are able to fulfill each learning objective before moving on to another concept. Completed activities turn blue, which is a great visual tool for students to focus on the next step.

Levels

Open English has developed eight English competency levels, where level 1 represents “brand new” English students and level 8 represents those who may be considered “bilingual”. Each Open English level is aligned with the equivalent levels on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

MEDIA KIT | WEEKLY STUDY PLAN LEVELS

6STYLE GUIDE

Live Classes

Live Classes are available to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and are taught by native English-speaking instructors located around the globe. Two live classes are offered each day, covering different topics, and students are able to join one or both classes at any time throughout the day. Conversation topics may either be informal, such as “Travel – Packing for a trip”, or formal, such as “Business – Meeting time.” Classes are composed of 6-8 students for informal conversations, and 3-5 for formal instruction – class sizes that are made possible by our large network of teachers. Students are grouped based on their levels to allow them to move at a comfortable pace with their peers; advanced students are able to move at a faster pace, while beginners are not intimidated by those who are further along. At the end of each live class, teachers provide personalized feedback to each student with encouragement and tips for improvement.

Lessons are a part of the 10 units of coursework contained in each level. Each unit is comprised of 5 lessons, 1 review lesson, and a unit assessment. Every lesson contains 27 slides consisting of a combination of comprehension and listening, “drag and drop”, fill in the blank, and other interactive activities designed to challenge and engage students. These slides cover one or two learning objectives and six new vocabulary words that are specific to that lesson based on the level. These level appropriate objectives and words were modeled after the appropriate CEFR level. Aside from the specific learning content, there are additional features within the lessons page to enhance the students’ learning experience: Common Questions and My Notes.

Lessons

MEDIA KIT | LIVE CLASSES LESSONS

7STYLE GUIDE

The Common Questions feature allows students to view questions that have been previously asked by other students about this lesson, as well as to submit new questions. Teachers respond to new questions within 24 hours, which is posted to the student’s Progress tab under Teacher Feedback. New questions and the respective responses are then added to the existing list for future reference.

The My Notes feature is an electronic notebook that takes the hassle out of taking notes on paper. These notes can be viewed at any time in the Progress tab under Notebook and later converted to Adobe pdf files for download.

Students are required to take a unit assessment once all activities within a unit are complete, and must pass with a score of 705 or greater prior to progressing to the next unit. Students that pass the unit assessment are also given the opportunity to respond to an optional writing question for additional practice. Students receive direct feedback on their responses from a live (human) teacher.

MEDIA KIT | LIVE CLASSES LESSONS

8STYLE GUIDE

Practice

Practice is the final learning component of Open English’s curriculum. Unlike live classes and lessons, practice activities do not introduce a new academic concept, instead they reinforce the concepts student have already learned in live classes and lessons. Each study plan features various practice activities that allow students to practice their vocabulary, grammar, listening and speaking skills with exciting tools that keep them engaged in the learning experience. This consists of hundreds of videos, daily news articles and interactive challenges that feature concepts outlined in the unit objectives.

This includes interactive videos that utilize innovative speech assessment technology, which allows students to practice pronunciation and receive a letter grade based on their performance. Additionally, the daily news articles feature top stories in entertainment, technology, breaking news and sports, and are written in various levels of English. Each news article is followed by relevant comprehension questions for even more practice in comprehension and writing. New daily content ensures that students continue to be challenged and engaged each time they log onto the platform.

MEDIA KIT | PRACTICE

9STYLE GUIDE

Support

Support is an integral part of achieving Open English’s goal of student success. Our mission is to revolutionize the English learning experience by providing engaging and convenient online learning tools and support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is incredibly important to us that our students know that we are always available to make their online learning experience as convenient and effective as possible. Their success and satisfaction are our number one priorities. No matter where they are on the platform students are always a click away from getting help from a teacher for academic questions or contacting an advisor for questions concerning their account, payments or technical support.

Teacher Support

Teacher Support is one of the many ways students are able to receive academic support from Native English-speaking teachers. Apart from the feedback they receive regarding live classes, lessons and unit assessments, they are also able to reach out to teachers directly. Teachers respond directly to a student’s inquiry within 24 hours, which students can view in the Teacher Feedback menu. All teacher feedback remains in the Teacher Feedback menu so that students have a chance to refer to it at any time.

Advisor Support

Students also receive non-academic support from our Advisors. Advisors who speak the same language as the student respond to queries regarding their account, payments, and technical issues. We have advisors available 24 hours a day ready to assist our students. Our advisors can be contacted via telephone, live-chat or a student can even submit a request for advisors to call them directly. We want to ensure that our students receive prompt support in all areas so that they are able to focus on learning the material by immediately addressing and/or resolving any issues that may arise.

MEDIA KIT | SUPPORT TEACHER SUPPORT ADVISOR SUPPORT

10STYLE GUIDE

Awards

• Winner; EDDIE Award; Best Educational ESL Website• Winner; EDDIE Award; Education Software Review• Winner; International E-learning Award Academic Division• Winner; David Riley Award for Innovation in Business English• Winner; Interactive Media Awards• Winner; LINGOS Best Online English School

Media

MEDIA KIT | AWARDS MEDIA

Open English featured on ABC/Univision

ABC/Univision features Open English on their new Fusion network for the US Hispanic market.

The $120M bet on people-powered language learning with Open English

Hosted by Alexis Ohanian and The Verge, Season Two featured Open English as a Miami tech company to watch.

Andres interviewed by Ismael Cala on CNN

Ismael is often called the Hispanic Larry King and his show is broadcast to 50M homes in the US and LatAm.

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Copyright © 2015 Open English LLC. All rights reserved. The Open English name and the Open English logo are registered trademarks.

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