Creating Chatty English Speakers
Lexo Lab teaches English the way your child learned their first language: by listening and talking, exactly how our brains are wired to learn language.
See how much English your child can already say. Our free speaking test is quick and playful, just like Lexo Lab itself.
From first words to whole sentences, there's a Lexo Lab for every stage. Start with a free trial, no card needed, then choose monthly or 3 months.
How it works
Start free, in three steps
Take the free speaking test. A few minutes with pictures and spoken answers. You get a simple report on where your child is starting from, and which Lexo Lab is right for them.
Try it free. Every Lexo Lab starts with a free trial. No card, and it never turns into a paid plan by itself. At the end we send you a report on how it went.
Choose a plan if you'd like to continue. Monthly or 3 months. Your child carries on exactly where they stopped.
Hello from their teacher. Their animated teacher greets them and explains what to do, in their home language.
A story. Short, illustrated stories, told in natural English.
Their turn to talk. Your child says the words out loud, and Lexo Lab listens.
Games that bring words back. Quick activities bring back words from earlier stories, so they stick.
A celebration. Every session ends on a high, and your child can stop or keep going.
A few minutes a day. Lots of talking
Every Lexo Lab session follows the same happy routine, so children know what's coming and look forward to it.
You'll always know how it's going
A quick note on learning days. A short email when your child has practised, so you can say "well done".
A progress report every 3 weeks. What they've learned, the words they're using, and the sounds they're working on.
Your parent pages. See every lesson and word, and listen to your child's own recordings as their English grows.
Easy to set up. Open your child's app on their tablet or phone straight from your parent pages; no passwords for them to remember.
Learning happens in English. Everything for you is in your language.
A Lexo Lab for every age and Stage
Talking Stickers
For children taking their very first steps in English, even before they can read. Every new word your child meets in a story becomes a sticker in their own sticker book, and they say each one out loud with their animated teacher. No scores and no getting it wrong: just a growing collection of English words they love to say.
Words
For children who have made a start and are ready to build a broad spoken vocabulary. Your child watches short illustrated stories and says every new word out loud, with help in their home language whenever they need it. Two stories a day, about 15 minutes, whenever suits your family.
Speak
For children who know plenty of words and are ready to put them into sentences. Your child watches a story, answers questions out loud, builds sentences, then describes what they see in their own words. Lexo Lab listens for grammar as well as sounds, so practice goes where your child needs it next.
Chatter
For children with growing fluency
Coming soon
From sticker-collecting little ones to confident young talkers, there's a Lexo Lab for every age. Start with a free trial, no card needed, then choose monthly or 3 months.
The Team
Mae Tadayyon
PhD (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL)
Mae has a PhD in Applied Linguistics and has taught English for over 15 years, including as a university lecturer. She specialises in oral corrective feedback, which she trains teachers in and has presented at the English New Zealand conference.
Beverley Morgan
Master of Education. BA (Hons) in Lit Studies
Beverley is our writer, and she creates our stories. She has worked on many creative projects over the years, including children’s audio stories and speculative fiction novels.
Mai Sakamoto
Master of TESOL
Mai has taught extensively in Japan and New Zealand and has a wide range of experience. She’s passionate about building confidence in young learners and helping them to enjoy speaking English.
John Payne
Creative Director
John has a wealth of experience in creating and directing artistic projects. John has directed a number of children's animated TV series, alongside many other creative projects.
Made by people. Helped by AI
Every Lexo Lab lesson is designed by experienced English teachers. Our stories are written by writers with a background in education, and our illustrations are drawn by talented artists. That's the part we'd never hand to a machine.
We use AI where it genuinely helps your child. The voices in Lexo Lab, including your child's animated teacher speaking in your language, are created with AI from scripts written by our team. AI also listens to your child speak, helps us give clear feedback, and shows us how children learn so we can keep improving. Your child's recordings stay private. They're never sold, never shown to other families, and never handed to other companies to train their AI.
The story that started it
I was living in Tokyo, trying to learn Japanese, when I ran into a problem I assumed someone had already solved: I wanted an app or a system that would actually teach me to speak the language — not just recognise words on a page. I couldn't find one.
The deeper I looked, the more I ran into a pattern with its own name: "mute English." It describes someone who's studied a language for years — who can read it, write it, pass the tests — but freezes the moment they need to actually say something out loud. It happens with any second language, but it's so common with English specifically that the term exists because of it. The cause is simple: speaking requires practise — a combination of knowledge and muscle memory, repeated many times — but that's hard to get when you don't "live" in the language.
I'd trained as an English teacher years before, with a diploma in EFL, so I recognised the problem from the classroom side immediately. But what I'd spent the years since actually doing was different: building and running production processes for children's entertainment — the demanding work of making a complex creative system actually work, reliably, at scale. Nobody had put those two things together for language learning. So I did.
Of the four language skills, speaking is the hardest to teach — and the one almost every product quietly avoids. Reading and vocabulary are easy to practice and test with a multiple-choice question; a spoken sentence isn't. And speaking is, overwhelmingly, the skill learners most want when they learn a language.
Lexo Lab exists because learning English should be fun, engaging and verbal — the way we all learned our first language, trying words and phrases, connecting them to pictures and ideas, responding to the world around us — exactly the way we see children learn to speak.
That's our mission. We hope you enjoy learning and talking with Lexo Lab.
Derek Reeves
FOUNDER
Talk to me
I started Lexo Lab because I know how it feels to want to speak a language and not get the chance. Every family who trusts us with their child matters to me, and so does what you think. Questions, worries, ideas, or something that isn't working: every message comes straight to me, and I read each one myself. Write in whichever language you're comfortable with, and you'll hear back within 2 working days.
Derek Reeves, Founder