Hello Mingovillers,

If you are fond of Mingoville and of learning English in general then take your learning yet to another level - mobile phones.

At Mingoville, we’ve built a mobile phone English learning application based on the famous Sudoku game.

In the game, you will be playing and interacting with images from the Mingoville program as well as listening to the English pronunciation allowing you to improve your own comprehension skills. The game is designed to improve your English listening skills through the practice of listening and recognizing English words. The game has 3 levels and here are just few snapshots of the game in action.

All you need to do is download the application and install it onto your mobile phone. See the installation instructions in your mobile phone manual yourself or with your parents.

Download the Mingoville Sudoku Game HERE.

Note: you have to check whether or not flash games are compatible with your phone. The game requires Flash Lite 1.0 (minimum).

Have fun learning English with Mingoville.

Stephan Stephensen, CEO

Hello Mingovillers,

Just letting you know that 155 new words are being added to the Mingoville dictionary.

We are testing the new additions and they will be out for use next week. Here are some shots of the new words. 

- Breakfast -

- Dragon -

- Honey -

Like in our current dictionary, it is still possible to listen to and record your own English pronunciation. However, this time we are adding a new feature, that is, an option to listen to both female and male voices. All you need to do is to select a preferred option at the top of the page to the left above an image (see below).

We hope you enjoy the new words and the new feature in the dictionary. Leave us your comments if you have any feedback or any other suggestions you may have.

Have fun while learning!

Stephan Stephensen, CEO

Twitter is an online micro-blogging social networking service that allows its community members to communicate with each other through the posting of short messages (i.e. within the 140 character limit). The service is free of charge and it has recently gained wide popularity in the social media world.

Mingoville wants to reach out even more to its students and their parents through such a wonderful service as Twitter. Come and follow Mingoville at http://twitter.com/Mingoville and stay up-to-date on the news related to Mingoville’s English learning games, new products and features, partnerships and other exciting things. Just click on the image to check latest Mingoville twits.

Have fun learning English!

Hello Mingovillers,

Today, we wanted to share with you some fun karaoke songs recorded by our students just like you who are using Mingoville to learn English in a fun way.

As you might have already explored, inside the Mingoville program we have Karaoke songs inside each of the 10 Missions.

For example, here is a snapshot of the song “Run, Jump, Have Fun” in Mission 10 - Sport and Media.

Now, we want to show you how other Mingovillers sing these songs, record themselves and that is all while having lots of fun.

Here is Danijela singing “Run, Jump, Have Fun” (Click the Play button below)

Here is Jannick singing “ABC and 123″ (Click the Play button below)

Have you listened to Danijela and Jannick sing? If so, good, because we want to encourage you to record your version of Mingoville songs. It is fun!

When you click on the “Record” button, you will see a pop-up window as part of the Adobe Flash Player Settings, press the green button “Allow” and start singing. Your songs will be stored in your profile and you can always access them at any time.

Have fun!

Hello Mingovillers,

This is a little bit off topic.

But we just got our Mingoville website graded on WebsiteGrader.com and we got 90. This is a much better grade for an English learning site. But certainly there is still room for improvement.

Hello Mingovillers,

A couple of weeks ago, we found a blog on the Internet that caught our attention. We got inspired by this story and decided to write a post on our blog.

Here it goes.

The blogger’s name is Debbie. Debbie lives in Japan where she works as English teacher. She is married and has two lovely sons: Issei and Koji.

Debbie has a blog where she shares with her students and friends some interesting and personal things about her life and family.

We found her blog very interesting to pass it around internally. Not only she writes in a interesting style but also because her family has this tradition called “Flamingo Friday”.

As Debbie says, they started the tradition a couple of months ago and every week they pick up pictures of flamingos from their house and Google Images. They simply love flamingos!

Debbie’s sons both speak English well. However, Debbie thinks that her boys, especially the older one, should take advantage of some online programs (like Mingoville) to improve reading, spelling and writing skills. Not to mention that Mingoville is all about flamingos that speak only English.

This is what Debbie wrote on her blog about Mingoville:

“a very good friend of mine (Hi Tomoko!!), who knows that I am all over anything flamingo…told me about a site on the Internet for kids who are learning English. It is called [Mingoville]. Mingoville is a city where flamingos live and speak only English. (I’m liking this already!) There is an interactive dictionary with 32 different languages…and they also have spelling, speaking, listening and reading activities. And the best part…..IT’S FREE!!! She told me about it, not only because of the particular theme this site has, but because it is a pretty good site for Issei to work on his own reading, spelling and writing skills. Though the young man can communicate verbally in English…..he is just like most other kids his age here in Japan when it comes to the other aspects of communication.”

By the way, Halloween is coming soon. Inspired by Debbie’s blog we’ve found some pretty flamingo costumes for almost the whole family. Pick and choose …

In the end, we just want to add that we are happy that by using Mingoville our users can combine ‘traditions’ with fun learning. If you want to read more about Debbie’s Flamingo Fridays go here

Vladimir Chen

Hello Mingovillers,

We just wanted to share with you that we’ve been working very hard on our new and fresh look website that will be launched at the end of November.

On our blog here we want to share a quick insight into how the new website is going to look. See below one of the sub-pages.

In addition to the fresh look and feel, there is going to be tons of new features on the new website, one of which is the “Downloads” section (as shown above).

In “Downloads”, kids, parents and teachers will be able to take advantage of all Mingoville’s resources including images, videos, songs, wallpapers, games and many more including print materials for fun extracurricular activities at schools.

On the frontpage, we are going to have a couple of very cool features. We are certain that they will help us build even stronger bonds in the community.

One of the fancy features is that Mingovillers will now be able to see where new users are coming from. Just imagine, how cool it is when you know where your mates from different corners of the world are stemming from. It is a big sense of pride of being a part of the big community while playing and learning English by taking small steps.

Vladimir Chen (on behalf of the Mingoville team)

Hello Mingovillers,

It is again our pleasure to share with you that EnglishClub.com has selected Mingoville as their ‘Site of the Month’ . EnglishClub is an ESL web site that has been dedicated to providing both students and teachers quality English learning/teaching content.

Every month EnglishClub recommends one site to its users. This month Mingoville has received this award. We are proud and highly appreciate the recognition. To read more about the award go here.

Vladimir Chen (On behalf of Mingoville team)

Hello Mingovillers,

We are so happy to announce our partnership with U.S. English Foundation Inc., one of the largest US educational foundations that promotes the role of English language, helps disseminate information on English teaching methods, sponsors educational programs and so on.

Mingoville is made available to all kids residing in the US via the Foundation.

Mr. Mauro E. Mujica, who has been the Chairman/CEO since 1993, addresses a serious problem with people not being able to speak English in the US. Quoting Mr. Mujica “Mingoville provides English instruction at any time, virtually anywhere, removing some of the most commonly cited barriers to English learning. With Mingoville, the opportunity to learn English is just a click away, and through our special partnership, free. English learners will be able to practice their English skills and take advantage of hundreds of lessons and activities at their pace and on their time, putting English acquisition within reach.”

We hope that we at Mingoville make our contribution to solving problems at this level.

Stephan Stephensen

CEO

Hello all,

We are very proud to announce our partnership with a global non-profit organization e-Learning for Kids in providing free English courses for children.

We want to contribute to reach the second goal from United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, which is to achieve universal primary education by developing and providing high quality online English learning for kids. In order to reach those kids who cannot afford education, we need to work with foundations like e-Learning for Kids.

To read the rest of the news go here

Stephan Stephensen