Founder story

About LingoFloat

A learner's journey, a neuroscience insight, and a new way to feel at home in a foreign language.

1. Why This Matters to Me

I came to Australia as an immigrant with one clear promise to myself: I didn't want to just be “fluent” in English — I wanted to sound like a native speaker.

Not for perfection. Not to impress anyone.

I wanted my language to reflect my full identity, not a smaller, “translated” version of it. I refused to let my English level limit the quality of my life or the clarity of my ideas.

But reaching that level is incredibly hard.

For years, every English test labelled me “intermediate,” and I stayed stuck there. I listened more, read more, studied more… but nothing pushed me into the level where English truly felt like me.

At some point I realised: the problem wasn't me. Something was wrong with the method.

So I started digging into psychology, neuroscience, and my own learning data to understand what was really happening in the brain.

2. What I Discovered About How the Brain Works

Our brain is constantly flooded with sensory input. To avoid overload, it automatically filters most of it out and prioritises signals it already recognises as meaningful. Anything it hasn't yet learned to interpret gets downgraded.

In daily life, this is useful. In foreign-language listening, it becomes a barrier.

When the brain hears sounds it cannot attach meaning to, it treats them as irrelevant auditory signals — basically, background noise. Once something is tagged as “noise,” the brain stops investing effort into processing it.

It's not resisting learning; it's just following a rule:

Focus on what matters; ignore what doesn't.

To move something out of the “noise” category, the brain needs proof that this sound is meaningful.

This happens when we:

notice the sound on purpose,
attach a meaning to it,
reinforce that connection before the brain forgets again.

This explains why intermediate learners often get stuck.

At higher levels, you rarely encounter truly new pieces of language often enough. A phrase might appear once, then disappear for weeks — long enough for the brain to forget it and file it back under “noise.”

This applies not only to vocabulary, but to:

fast or unclear listening moments,
grammar patterns that don't feel natural yet,
expressions you can recognise but can't use.

3. The Missing Piece

I realised that advanced learners like me don't need more random input or more abstract flashcards. We need a way to capture the exact moment when something feels new or difficult, and then see it again in the same context before it fades.

We need a system that

lets you import whatever content actually matters to you,
segments it intelligently so you can focus,
helps you decode any expression without leaving the flow,
reminds you of those exact moments at the right time,
connects everything back to real conversations.

4. Why Existing Tools Weren't Enough

Traditional methods are either too rigid or too shallow.

Classroom listening is controlled and artificial.
YouTube and podcasts are authentic but chaotic — you miss things and can't revisit them properly.
Flashcards drill translations, not real encounters.
Apps for beginners feel too slow and irrelevant once you're past B1/B2.

I wanted something that combined the best parts of listening, decoding, and review — without forcing me to leave the context that made the language meaningful in the first place.

5. How LingoFloat Works

LingoFloat is built around one idea: language sticks when your brain meets it again, in context, while it still feels familiar.

To support that, the product combines learning science, spaced repetition, and real-world encounters.

• The Problem with Traditional Flashcards

Spaced repetition is one of the most powerful discoveries in learning science. It works because it brings information back right before you forget it. That's why tools like Anki are so popular.

But most spaced-repetition systems share one big limitation: they bring the translation back, not the encounter.

A typical flashcard gives you a word, a translation, maybe a short note.

That's good for remembering a basic meaning. But it's not enough to understand the word or phrase in fast speech, feel the grammar around it, know when it sounds natural to use it, or feel confident using it in a real conversation.

In other words, they train your memory for labels, not your brain for real language use.

• Our Learning Principle: Encounters, Not Just Translations

LingoFloat is designed around a different principle: don't just store meanings. Store meaningful encounters.

Instead of only remembering “this word = this translation,” LingoFloat focuses on where you met it (which podcast, which video, which context), how it sounded (the audio, the sentence, the rhythm), and what it was doing in the sentence (grammar role, nuance, tone).

Then, it helps you meet that same language again while you still recognise it — across listening, reading, grammar, and speaking activities.

So it's not just a vocabulary tool. It's a system for catching any difficulty — a confusing sentence, a grammar pattern, an unclear audio moment — and making sure you can revisit it in a smart way.

• What You Actually Do Inside LingoFloat

Here's what this principle looks like in practice. With LingoFloat, you can:

Import what you actually care about. Podcasts, YouTube videos, and your own audio — so you're always learning from material that feels relevant and interesting.
See smart transcripts and segments. Audio is transcribed and broken into manageable chunks, with time-stamped text so you can jump to exactly the moment you struggled with.
Capture difficulties with one click. When something is hard — a word, a phrase, a grammar pattern, or a fast bit of audio — you can look up definitions, highlight the chunk, and save it for later review.
Review at the right moment, not randomly. LingoFloat brings things back using spaced repetition — but instead of just showing you a translation, it reintroduces the whole situation in different ways, such as mini dialogues, shadowing exercises, slightly varied sentences, and listening tasks that help you catch the phrase in natural speed.
Strengthen multiple skills at once. Each review strengthens listening recognition, pronunciation and rhythm, grammar intuition, natural usage and collocations, and long-term memory of the phrase or pattern.

The result:

The language feels familiar and usable in real conversations — not just on a flashcard screen.

6. For Learners Who Want More Than “Good Enough”

LingoFloat is for learners like me:

You don't want your English ability to limit your identity or your opportunities.
You're stuck at the intermediate plateau and know you're capable of more.
You want to move towards C1–C2, not just stay at “good enough to get by.”
You care about sounding natural, not just “correct.”

7. The Invitation

When you actually start using it, you'll see it's more than just helpful.

Give it a try — and let your English catch up with who you really are.

Join the open beta