Language learning is usually composed of four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. My business will be focusing on what I consider to be the foundational skill of language learning - listening - which also happens to be the most widely neglected skill in the language learning world today.

When we are babies, we are acutely attuned to the sounds of our environment. However, as we grow older, we stop being so sensitive to different sounds, since we already know how to identify and produce the sounds of our native language. As an adult, when you want to learn a new language, your ears essentially block you from detecting different sounds - in the world of linguistics, these sounds are called phones - so you essentially end up speaking the other language with the sounds you already know. This is why people have such a hard time understanding native people speaking a language, and its also why almost everyone who learns a new language does so with a heavy accent. Its also the reason why language learning is such a laborious process as an adult. Children spend months just listening before they even dare to utter syllables - mama, papa. Almost all language learning programs completely neglect this, and instead have you memorize words (which you are, btw, incorrectly pronouncing from the get-go).

Essentially, Im creating content to a. train people's ears and b. teach them to imitate new sounds. Doing this will be require many things.

1. The site needs to be able to be read by people who speak different languages.
2. I need a way to test people's listening comprehension by comparing the sounds of their target language to the sounds of ALL of the languages that that person already might know (right now Im working on creating a unique database of all of the sounds of the languages I will be offering first). So I want a way for them to be able to choose the correct answer. I don't think this will be too difficult to do for programming.
3. I will be hiring professional speech therapists and vocal coaches to assist students in the imitation phase. I need a way to connect these teachers with the students so that they can have video chats. I need to also have a way to record the students and teachers voices, put it on the students "profile", so that it can be analyzed later
4. In general, I need voice-recording software for the students.
5. Aside from listening (main service) and imitation, I will also offer a unique service to help people learn semantics (the meaning of words). For this, I also want to offer a service that utilizes live teachers, so again, I need to be able to connect teachers and students. Something like italki.com

I know this sounds messy af, and thats because it is.... Im still studying phonetics and developing my exact methodology. But I want to be prepared. If I need to learn some programming, I need to start now, not later.