Gymglish

Gymglish is a language service for individuals that provides English lessons via the Internet.

Gymglish describes it as "a personalized, daily English 'workout', which uses an artificial intelligence engine to deliver humorous English lessons by e-mail. The objective of course is to to improve and maintain the user's knowledge and command of English.

One thing we like about GymGlish is that it's adaptable to various individual needs; in fact, their service bends to four markets: individuals, professionals, university students and professors.

How it works...

Every morning you receive an email in English with an assortment of language activities - there's even an audio component. The content consists of about 10 minutes' worth of stories, dialogues, questions, 'mini-lessons' and reviews, which is good, because any longer would probably be too much for busy people to digest on a daily basis.

Each lesson offers a new scenario with professional situations, diverse accents and humor.

After you send a completed lesson, you promptly receive a second e-mail with your daily score, personalized explanations (in English mind you), requested vocabulary translations and audio transcripts.

What is most impressive about this service is that the pedagogy, themes and revisions of each English lesson are continuously customized and updated by their "A9 expert" Artificial Intelligence engine. In other words, their software adapts to the level, expectations and needs of each user.

Gymglish claims to have currently about 260,000 users worldwide, with an 80% average participation rate. If this participation rate is indeed true and accurate based on this population of users, then it appears that the experience of using this service is certainly enjoyable (if not effective).

An important caveat:

English lessons from GymGlish are designed for adults of all levels of English except beginners.

Gymglish cites several references on their website from companies like Oracle, IBM France and Shell Petroleum; from unversities such as University Paris 5 René Descartes, HEC Paris, Ecole Centrale Paris and University of Berlin. Gymglish also works in partnership with many English teachers and language schools; these schools offer their students blended learning packages combining face to face lessons that complement the Gymglish service.

Go to their website (available in French, English, Spanish and German) for more information and a free trial: http://www.gymglish.com