Am I fluent at languages? No

Not being fluent was an advantage when designing KLOO

As the inventor of KLOO, I am frequently asked whether I am fluent in languages. Alas no. The presumption is that I must be fluent in some languages in order to have created KLOO. In reality, not being fluent and having a poor experience of learning languages was an advantage when it came to designing a game, because I knew what issues I wanted to fix.

At school I was not particularly good at languages – French and German were my weakest subjects!…I found languages difficult and confusing – and they were not my favourite subjects. The way we were taught really was archaic – and not enjoyable – and there were no games to bring the subject to life.

The issues I had are the same as those of millions of other people who want to learn a second language. I had difficulties with retaining vocabulary, I was confused by grammar rules, and, I learned language mainly by rote. My knowledge was inflexible and not at all useful for proper interaction with French or German people.

I may never have had any interest in creating a game, if it were not for the fact that I married an Italian and we had aspirations of moving to Italy. To do that, we wanted to improve our children’s language skills. They were at school and also found languages difficult – so I decided to create a game for them. And I knew what I wanted it to do!

I wanted it to be fun and motivational

I wanted players to effortlessly build vocabulary as they played

I wanted a game where you could build sentences in seconds.

The first game of KLOO was played with bits of paper around a kitchen table…but when I saw how motivated and excited my children were….and how fast they were learning, without even trying – I knew we had a game that was worth sharing.

You can learn languages with KLOO too. Take a look to see how you build vocabulary fast using Discover Learning and then can build sentences in seconds (12 million sentences in fact!).

Most of all you can have fun – and it will never feel like work. Never.

Learn foreign words as you play