Website that eases language learning

By building a simple software, Quizlet.com has made studying languages easy and has material for students from grade school to grad school. It can be used by high-achieving as well as other students to get good grades

Lata Jain

No two people study the same way. Even when reviewing identical materials, students see the page differently, process information differently and find the work easier or harder on very personal ranges of difficulty. Quizlet is a new simple software that helps students learn and teachers teach.

Created by Andrew Sutherland in October 2005 to study high school French vocabulary, Quizlet.com is now one of the largest educational sites in the world. Over 12 million unique visitors per month, from grade school to grad school, study a wide range of subjects using Quizlet's learning tools and games. Quizlet's parent company, Old School Industries, has invested several million dollars in the business since 2009.

What all students do have in common is that they need to study. How that happens and what that looks like has changed over the years. Computers: at-home desktops, laptops, handheld devices and mobile technology, have created new opportunities and options for studying.

It's been a classic start-up story. Andrew Sutherland, a San Francisco High School Sophomore back in 2005, was frustrated with studying for a French exam and figured there could be a better, more efficient and engaging way to memorize the French names of farm animals. A computer programmer since seven years old, Andrew went online and built his own study site which he later shared with some friends. Now Quizlet is closing in on five million unique visitors monthly from across the country and remains free to use.

Andrew's little project has a dedicated team of people and has helped 13 million users (in 2010 alone). Quizlet offers 5,017,611 flashcard sets, provides 154,264,083 terms and definitions, has logged over 430,364,928 answers, and currently boasts 1,760,735 registered users (it's free and will remain so).

Quizlet is great for both the high-achieving types who want to study efficiently and get good grades, and for the lazier types who might not study at all but do because Quizlet is easy and quick to use.

Quizlet's already a great tool for learning vocabulary, but what about grammar, verb conjugations? If you think of language as writing, reading, listening, and speaking, Quizlet should help you develop skills in all four of those areas. For example, one of the problems with foreign language learning is that kids don't spend enough time speaking, because it's hard for teachers to spend time with students to listen to them individually. But that can be addressed if we build really good tools. Quizlet will be a one-stop shop for everything a language learner needs to do. After we get that down, there are lots of other exciting subjects for which to build high-quality tools.

Quizlet has an open platform that would allow other people to build cool stuff using our data. Quizlet has a very small team, so they just don't have the resources to build an iPhone app, an android app, a windows phone app, a WebOS app, a blackberry app, etc. so they let other developers do it for them us, and that has worked out really well. It's cool to see a lot of creative things people do with their data.

Known officially as 'Flash Cards' on Quizlet's website, this mode is shown automatically on the site'smain page. It is basically a simple flash card study method. One side of the card is shown, and clicking on the "Click to flip" button which shows the other side of the card. The option is available to show both sides and this option will divide the screen in two with the term and definition shown on the same page. Another option is available to see the Flash Cards feature in full screen. If you wanted to shuffle the order of the flash cards, this option is also available.

Introduced in May 2012, Quizlet's Multiplayer game focuses on sentences and using the words in context. It allows a group of students to write sentences using a vocabulary word, individually and anonymously rate everyone's sentences, and then review the mistakes of each sentence if in a classroom setting.