Learning foreign languages and other subjects in self-study

Upcoming project: English course for anybody

This project is very precious to me. A lot of people around the world are still unable to get a good education or a good job because they only speak the local language and don't speak English. They can't improve their education through self-study because most books and websites are only available in English and they can't learn English because schools teaching English charge a lot of money and people with bad jobs don't have that much money, not to mention that they also can't afford to stop working in order to attend a course. To break that vicious circle, I believe that there is a big need for an English course that fulfills the following criteria:

it's completely free
it can be used by youths and adults alike
it's available in many languages, particularly languages in which materials are scarce
it will give people a very good command of English, enough to allow them to use English materials for further education
it can be accessed by anybody in any country, no matter whether he's an African farmer, a Chinese student, a Mexican janitor, a French unemployed... lots of people around the world don't have the possibility to learn English well, even though they would love to

I will create this course, along with a group of volunteers.

The course we are creating will fulfill all of the mentioned requirements. It will be designed particularly to quickly give students with no prior language-learning experience a good command of English. The method used will also make it very easy to translate the course, so that it can become available in many languages within short time. The course will first be available online as a website and later we will also have CDs and prints of it shipped to developing countries where not many people have internet access. We will even try to cooperate with the "One Laptop per Child" project to have the course included on every laptop they give away to children in developing countries.

But for this project we will need help. We need:

volunteer programmers, designers, lesson writers, voice artists, translators
generous individuals and companies who financially support the development of the course and contribute to the hosting costs
people to spread the word

If you want to volunteer, please contact me by e-mail. If you want to donate, send your contribution to sprachprofi@gmx.net or write to the same address in order to get details on how to donate by check, wire transfer and other means. Every donator will of course be kept informed about all developments.

Current status of the project:
Project started on May 5th.
May 8th: consensus on methodology was reached, now discussing lesson plan submissions