About Us
Champolu is a Company specialized in language learning.
It was founded in New York in 2015. The name is an homage to Jean Francois Champollion, who deciphered Rosetta Stone. Champollion was able to unravel a completely foreign language (Hierogryphics), by simple clues. Following on his approach, we transform language learning into a journey of discovering clues and gradually understanding and using the new language.
Method
The method used in all Champolu products “Champolu Method” is an innovative approach to language learning. It aims to put the learning materials in a “gamefied” format, making it more fun to learn than rote memorization. It also aims to make it more effective, by focusing on the more important aspects of the language that need to be learned, and focus on them on a measurable way. It follows a linguistic principle to language learning called “comprehensible input”, which introduces only one new element in each piece of input to learners. Champolu method is made out of the following components:
Color Matching
This is a very intuitive approach to show how words and phrases, and even letters and sounds, are matched to their translation and transliteration in different script. This allows learners to easily see the structure of the language they are learning, while also learning new vocabulary in context.
Bilingual Minimal Pairs
Minimal pairs have long been used in phonology to understand certain phonological phenomena. At Champolu, we use the same idea but for a pair of sentences from the target language, with only one minimal difference. This difference can relate to any grammar or vocabulary aspect. When learners are able to identify the difference, they can learn it.
Most Frequent Words
Any language in the world has tens of thousands of words that are used among speakers, which makes it harder for learners of foreign languages. However, there is a very simple idea that can make this challenge easier. This idea is called Zipf’s law, which analyzes the frequency of words against their rank. This law indicates that the most frequent words makes up most of the words used in the language. This means that if you learn the most frequent word in a language, you’ll actually find that it is used in like 20% of all the words you encounter. Therefore, when you learn a limited list of 100 words you may be able to understand perhaps 50% of all words encountered.
Spoken and Written Language
Many language learning approaches focuses on written languages, perhaps motivated by the lack of audio capabilities in textbooks and other media. At Champolu, we stress that language needs to be heared. This allows a very important component of audio in all Champolu products.