Why We Built the WELE Program
Before, as a science-track high school student and an engineering student, I used to be really afraid of English, especially lacking confidence in my listening ability. Back in high school, every time I saw the teacher turn on a dialogue tape, my head would spin, my heart would pound, my legs would shake; I used to feel like I could learn anything except a foreign language.
In my first year of university, my older sister introduced me to the ESLPOD.COM program (it was still free back then), with its slow-read English listening lessons. At first I was skeptical about this method too, but because the speaker talked very slowly, my brain didn't get "overloaded" the way it did when listening to English elsewhere. That helped me build confidence, and I started listening more; the more I listened, the more I liked it, and gradually I understood whole sentences and then whole lessons. After more than a year of listening to over 200 episodes, IELTS listening passages were no longer too difficult.
When I started studying abroad in the UK (2009), a lot of friends asked me for tips on conquering this language. While helping them, I noticed everyone was running into the same problem I used to have: a lack of a learning roadmap broken into small steps from easy to hard, and a lack of persistence when running into difficulties during dictation practice.
So, starting in 2014, I and a group of friends founded the We Enjoy Learning English (WELE) program to address these two problems.
Over the past 10 years, WELE has accompanied thousands of young Vietnamese people (completely free of charge), helping everyone find confidence in learning English as well as in life. Witnessing everyone's success has only given us more motivation to keep growing WELE bigger and stronger.
By now, the program has had over 30,000 members join, and there is convincing evidence of the program's effectiveness. We really hope the program can spread the joy of learning English to the entire English-learning community across Vietnam.