Sounds Good - Digital trening av lytte- og uttaleferdigheter på et fremmedspråk

Language barriers compose a challenge with enormous social consequences. For individuals, language barriers may lead to withdrawal, depression and perceived isolation from society, while businesses may experience increased financial- and safety risks due to miscommunication. Language barriers may also prevent many professionals from getting a job where they can utilize their expertise and make it harder for employers to retain highly qualified personnel. Sounds Good will offer an innovative program for improving listening and speaking abilities in a foreign language. By performing a comparison of the user native language and the foreign language, Sounds Good will customize a learning trajectory to make the learning process more effective and useful. Sounds Good will also include a unique and reliable pronunciation evaluator to provide guidance. With this technology Sounds Good could become a world leading digital tool for training of listening and pronunciation skills within 5 years. The market for digital language learning products amounts to 23.3 billion and the number is increasing. Ed-tech is a rapidly growing business and education tools for mobile platforms currently outperforms both social applications and news applications on App store. At the same time the world is experiencing an ever-increasing flow of labor across borders and today there are over 37 million migrant workers worldwide, most with the need to learn a new language. Sounds Good will be commercialized through the creation of a spin-off company that will verify, develop, extend and promote Sounds Good. The company will aim for a business-to-consumer model in the early stages, and move forward to include a business-to-business model, with language schools, publishers, private companies and public institutions as customers later on. Based on current trends and an analysis of the competitors a conservative estimate for 2020 indicates a turnover of 60 million NOK for Sounds Good.