The research team headed by dr. Kateřina Chládková from the Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication at CU FA, in close cooperation with Ing. Miroslav Pešta, head of the Moovez team, have developed a unique method of natural language teaching, which they are now implementing into the mobile app of the Moovez educational startup. Both parties have signed a collaborative research agreement on April 7th, 2025.
Although we have made many new significant findings in researching language acquisition, many of the methods of teaching a foreign language used in practice are still not enough for many adults and adolescents to learn how to communicate fluently and confidently. The cooperation project between CU FA and the Czech startup Moovez, the owners of the language education app of the same name, might bring about the solution to the problem. Together, the parties develop a new method for teaching languages in adulthood based on scientific findings, which they will implement into the mobile app so that it may be used by people from all around the world.
Kateřina Chládková works simultaneously at CU FA and in the Institute of Psychology of the CAS and is also in charge of the SPEAKin lab. She and her team of researchers are one of the few in the world focusing on researching early language acquisition in newborns, linking it to research in adolescence and adulthood, „Our research, just as well as the data coming in from other labs, is evidence of the fact that if an adult gets access to the right conditions, they can indeed learn a foreign or second language similarly to how they gradually learned their mother tongue as a child,” Kateřina Chládková explains.
Allowing adults to learn a new language the natural way has been the vision of the Moovez app from the very beginning. „Thanks to this collaboration, we are creating a unique method of natural foreign language learning. Together, we have built it from research findings and practical experience in language teaching,”, dr. Chládková adds enthusiastically. The method will undergo continuous testing and improvement based on experiments in the lab, language classes and analysis of data from the app. „I believe that combining science and business is the right way to develop and, above all, implement a new method of language teaching.”
„We live in a groundbreaking era in terms of fantastic new opportunities for language teaching. Thanks to the internet, advanced mobile phones and artificial intelligence we can literally relive our childhood again, but this time in a new language, and thus learn the language effortlessly,” says the founder of Moovez startup, which has received a prestigious award for digital innovation given by the British Council in London a few years ago. „We wish to make learning a language drastically different and together create a world where all people can understand one another.”
„I am truly delighted by our collaboration with Moovez and look forward to seeing more developments. It is a great example of the direction the Faculty of Arts wants to expand its reach. The research results Kateřina Chládková and her team are building new and more effective ways of language teaching – something that has enormous potential to be truly useful,“ says Eva Lehečková, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.
