Who we are
Mine and Learn is a project that combines over half a century of language teaching tradition with what children and teenagers love most.
How it all started
Language teaching has been in this family since 1968, when Dr Benedykt Szumilewicz founded Language Laboratories, a scientific research and educational institution. For years it was run by his daughter, and today the project has passed into the hands of the third generation. Since its founding, we have followed the latest scientific research on how to effectively acquire a foreign language.
The tool has changed: Minecraft has replaced language laboratories. The philosophy remains unchanged: language is learned through immersion, not rote memorisation.
Mine and Learn was created from a simple observation: children spend hours playing games and speaking to each other in Polish, even though the same games exist entirely in English. You just need to put a tutor in that game who speaks exclusively in English – and learning happens by itself.
Szymon Hofman – founder of Mine and Learn
I taught my first lesson when I was 12 – to a peer. Language learning has been in my family for generations, and I've always had a talent for it, so over the following years I occasionally gave private lessons. For 7 years I've been doing this professionally – developing the Mine and Learn method, in which you learn English by playing Minecraft.