BSNL has launched an spoken English mobile learning program called "Learn English" powered by EnableM in association with OnMobile Global, looking to address opportunity in learning spoken English. EnableM also powers the same module on SMS for Nokia Life Tools, and OnMobile Global would have brought in the IVR and speech recognition technology. There 'Learn English' services tap into the opportunity provided by the need to learn English in India, with the language increasingly becoming 'aspirational'. Ethnographer and blogger Dina Mehta, on Nokia's invitation, had visited a village where she met a farmer who has subscribed to the Learn English component of Nokia Life Tools service for his son Umesh, and views it as an investment rather than an expense. Mehta writes that Umesh, a 9th standard student, didn't want to have have audio content instead of text: "he thought about it for a moment and said no! His reason was with text, you can read it again and again, understand the sentence well, and make corrections easily, which he felt would not be possible with audio." I think there's a case for both text and audio, instead of substituting one with the other. The spoken English component is best served through voice services, which is what the EnableM-OnMobile combine and a startup called English Seekho are doing: EnableM: BSNL users can subscribe to the program by dialing 1255537; Learn English is priced at Rs. 20 subscription, and a surprisingly low Rs. 0.30 per minute for the call. The content is available for Basic…
