Thank you for accompanying eJOY in such a challenge year like 2020. Due to COVID, we were forced to stay at home more than ever. We really treasure the fact that even in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, when the economy, tourism scene, education, and almost all aspects of life have been turned upside down, you and many other users still came to us to improve their English skills and learn something new. In the turn of the year, let wrap up what’ve we done in 2020 with a positive year in review 2020 and look forward to a brighter future in 2021!
But first, let’s hear a story from a dear user of eJOY that may brighten up your day 🙂
Inspirational story
Hoang is a very active, confident student at Fulbright University, where he studies all subjects in English. But few people know he was the first visually impaired student to use eJOY to practice listening and speaking English.
Being visually impaired, Hoang couldn’t make use of all eJOY features but rather use it to practice listening and mimicking to the native speakers in YouTube videos. After familiarizing himself with eJOY features, he started to estimate where the new words are on a subtitle sentence and used eJOY to look them up and hear the auto-pronunciation. The feature “one touch to stop the video, touch again is to play the video” might be simple but is extremely helpful to Hoang.
For more than 2 months, Hoang spent the whole day learning from basics with videos featuring native speakers. His effort eventually paid off, and he can now communicate easily and is ready for 1-to-1 intensive language courses.
In the last days of 2020, Hoang visited eJOY and shared how he surprised his teachers at Fulbright University with his speaking skills. If Hoang can do it, then surely you can also speak English fluently.
Read more about Hoang’s success story.
Important updates
eJOY Extension version 6 – integrate almost any video site you want
As people start to stay at home more, the need for online courses Lynda, Masterclass, Udemy, Coursera also increases, besides Netflix or YouTube.
Our newest version of eJOY extension helps you integrate subtitle lookup on all popular sites like Coursera, Udemy, YouTube with all features previously exclusive to Netflix, for example:
- Dual subtitles with IPA transcription
- Custom playback speed
- Printable subtitles
- Instant look-up
Take advantage of this time to increase your knowledge and opportunities in 2021.
Find out more about eJOY extension version 6
eJOY Reader – reading app & dictionary
In 2019, eJOY launched an all-powerful dictionary app. And by 2020, the dictionary app has been rebranded as eJOY Reader, an even better app that helps you practice reading with news, ebook, or any text, look up and save any new words while reading, and turn on audio reader to practice listening.
eJOY App – Never sleep feature & more
Our new Never sleep feature helps you listen to videos passively even when you exit the screen. Along with it were some other important features:
- Sorting wordbooks and vocabularies in alphabetical, date, and fluency level
- Downloading video in the background
- Analyzing and showing vocabularies used in each video (categorized by IELTS, TOEIC, and so on).
For us, the year 2021 has already started. The challenges that 2020 posed didn’t stop us from having in mind an ambitious plan for the next big thing in eJOY learning ecosystem.
New year plan 2021
In the first month of the new year, you will experience the new eJOY video app with a much smoother login and synchronization system than before thanks to the latest technology upgrade. This is a stepping stone for some very important improvements of eJOY in 2021.
eJOY English App – the New generation
After more than 2 years of bringing eJOY App to the community of English learners and listening to the feedback and expectations of our users from all around the world, we have decided to upgrade eJOY App to a whole new system that is much smarter and more intuitive.
Learning vocabulary faster and more effectively
The new app will count your learning effort in all games, which means whichever vocabulary games you play, your word’s fluency would increase, thanks to your hard work.
More than that, you will have 3 options to review your vocabulary, depending on your availability and your preference. These are, as you can see from the sample screen below, speed training, classic training (as you usually play), and native training. If you are busy with work and have only 5 minutes to review your due words, you can choose Speed training. If you want to review with the native audio of the context you saved, you can choose Native training. And if you love the existing training mode, stick with Classic training.
Connecting learners around the world
Many of you have been learning hard by yourselves on eJOY. But it’s time to go out of your comfort zone and connect with other learners. The new eJOY App not only shows you a leaderboard with your rank and top learners, but also offers you social interaction with other learners to practice speaking.
However, you don’t need to wait til that speaking feature goes live. You can start right now. Pick a topic that you like, do the exercises with the suggested videos of that topic, answer the discussion questions, and finally, fill out the check-in form to help us find your perfect speaking partner. More than 30 members worldwide have registered to participate and we have successfully conducted 10 speaking practice pairing sessions.
Learn more about the online speaking group.
New features on eJOY extension and eJOY web
Some of the features that you have been expecting for a long time will be available in 2021, such as:
- PDF file uploader feature on eJOY Web
- Connecting video files from Google drive to eJOY App
Get ready to learn a new language with GlotDojo
More and more people nowadays want to adopt two or more languages rather than just English. Why not give GlotDojo, our newly launched extension, a chance in 2021? Similar to eJOY Extension, GlotDojo is also a free Chrome extension designed for learning languages with movies and videos. However, with GlotDojo, you can learn and translate more than 70 languages, and hone your Chinese/Japanese with 2 advanced dictionaries dedicated to these languages.
Wish you a joyful and prosperous year of 2021
Over the next year, we hope to bring more improvements to our apps to make them even more user-friendly and efficient to you. Do not hesitate to give us your feedback or any ideas you may have, because you are the reasons why eJOY exists!
Lastly, we wish you a real Happy New Year. Let’s embark on another chapter together, and yes, don’t forget that you have eJOY and many other eJOY learners in your New year resolution!