Helping world to learn Chinese

Launched in August last year, Lingo Bus has since been following its parent's footsteps to go global.

"Expanding our overseas business will be a major task this year. We aim to develop a total of 50,000 paid users and over 10,000 skilled Chinese teachers in three years," said Mi Wenjuan, founder and CEO of VIPkid.

Different from offline courses, Lingo Bus is like the online version of the Confucius Institutes, providing one-on-one personalized Chinese lessons for children aged between 5 and 12.

Kids can learn Chinese through an online course where each lesson with a Chinese teacher lasts around 25 minutes. Such teachers are carefully selected. They should at least have a bachelor's degree in teaching Chinese as a second language, a Mandarin proficiency certificate, and minimum one-year teaching experience.

The class is combined with interactive videos and songs, which can help students to get involved in the learning environment. Students gradually learn to sing a song effortlessly, without even realizing it, or build their Chinese vocabulary with each passing day.

Also, children in these one-on-one classes do not feel nervous or any peer pressure.

Lingo Bus said it has enrolled over 4,000 registered members so far from over 46 countries and regions including the US, Canada, Germany, Japan and Malaysia. Nearly 6,000 Chinese teachers have also applied to join the company's faculty.

Lingo Bus foresees a bright future for itself given China's growing influence as a global power, which is expected to continue to encourage foreigner children to pick up Chinese-language skills.

Like its Chinese-focused subsidiary, VIPkid is building on its success in China to quickly set up its own global network of online platforms that teach English.

It has started its own research institute, with the first batch of funding exceeding $10 million, headed by US senior researchers including Bruce McCandliss, an education professor and cognitive neuroscientist from Stanford University.