Our existing project is already helping many thousands of people to build a strong vocabulary (including many on donated licenses). We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit located in Sebastopol/Sonoma, and match online memberships with free licenses for disadvantaged students. This year, we will give free licenses to all 3rd graders in the Bay Area.

At eSpindle everything is about customizing learning to one's needs, and nothing is out-of-the-box. People can add words that are important for them, and do then receive customized tutoring, where each word is matched with audio, definition, sample sentences from our 100,000 word database.

We want to create a public, free-for-all platform where users (and other smart and generous people) can share word lists, so others can use them to have an easier time academically, or with their personal goals.

This will be a huge help for English language learners, students, and people entering a new field. Such a platform would empower them to increase their verbal skills without assorting to labor intensive flash cards/word lists/manually manage their progress.

Research has shown that users need to be exposed to a new word eight times, if it is encountered randomly in a text, before they actually store it in long-term memory. One sighting is normally enough to anchor the word in memory, if the word has been properly introduced beforehand.

This mash-up could build a repository of lists that can help people find, for example:

... words one should know when going to law school
... terminology related to global warming
... terms important to genetics
... words you'll need to read Ulysses... and survive
... Shakespearean terms to get more enjoyment out of his writings, etc.
... glossaries correlating with common text books (in all academic fields)
... lists assorted by subjects, to help English language learners build their vocabulary (body parts... herbs... cooking terms... internet lingo...)

If some of you have learned English as a second language, you know that it is a hard language to learn. Some say that 13% of all English words are illogical, meaning the spelling or pronunciation do not make sense.

eSpindle was designed to make the process more efficient and pain-free, and a word list mashup will help people manage their progress, accelerating their success.