12 August 2022 at 1:37 pm
PIF Recipient: Chasing Time English
Chasing Time English is a New Zealand company on a mission to make English language learning engaging, exciting, and effective for educators and students around the world.
Across the world, there is a vast market for English language learning. To put a number on it – around one billion learners. In many countries, though, English is taught through repetitive, mostly grammar-based content. The result is two-fold: students become disengaged and disinterested, and they advance in writing and reading skills at the expense of speaking skills.
Chasing Time English is a New Zealand company on a mission to make English language learning engaging, exciting, and effective for educators and students around the world. How? Through video. The team at Chasing Time English believe that English language classes should excite and inspire students to learn more, and decided video was the best medium to achieve this.
Chasing Time English uses engaging video story content to educate learners.
Through original, live-action-drama videos, Chasing Time English brings intrigue, humour, surprise and suspense into learning. Redrawing the line between education and entertainment, the short videos produced by Chasing Time English are designed to stand alone as quality entertainment, with strong learning outcomes embedded throughout.
To achieve this feat, the company brings together a team of English language educators, applied linguists and filmmaking professionals, who collaborate to create compelling, narrative-based drama content backed up by a cutting-edge pedagogy.
While other education publishers also produce English language learning video content, this is often lower quality video with limited learner appeal and retention. By creating professional quality drama content, Chasing Time English has become a market leader in English language video learning. Captivate learners, and the learning will follow.
Chasing Time English is one of the successful recipients of funding from the International Education Product Innovation Fund, a New Zealand Government-funded initiative to support pilot projects that reimagine and rethink what a New Zealand education experience can look like and mean for global learners. Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao (ENZ) is the government agency responsible for international education and is managing the Product Innovation Fund.
ENZ will work in a partnership approach with each successful recipient, sharing skills, expertise and resources to help each pilot succeed and develop into a self-sustaining education offering. The lessons learned through the pilot projects will be shared for the benefit of New Zealand’s entire international education sector, with a view to encouraging innovative, new offerings for international learners to experience a New Zealand education.
The Product Innovation Fund award will enable Chasing Time English to design, develop and deliver a new set of programmes for high beginner to elementary English language learners and educators. Target audiences include New Zealand education institutions with offshore partners, high schools in Japan and the Netherlands, and English language teachers at the post-beginner level.
Across two programmes of 10 weeks each, learners will be able to access up to 100 hours of engaging resources, including Chasing Time English’s distinctive video content, along with other audio and video resources and communication-based activities. The new set of programmes will incorporate a strong New Zealand theme, sharing New Zealand storytelling and themes of environmental sustainability and innovation. The original video content will also showcase New Zealand’s spectacular natural scenery, helping inspire learners and build a connection with New Zealand, wherever they are in the world.
With the support of ENZ through the Product Innovation Fund, Chasing Time English is set to continue growing its impressive offering for English language learners around the world. Already setting the bar for the quality of its learning resources and pedagogy, this Kiwi education provider is showing that online learning can be fun and effective, while also showcasing New Zealand’s landscapes, people and values to learners wherever they are.
More information:
