Most people who will use Phrasely already speak English. They passed the exams. They run meetings in it. A few of them dream in it. And they still walk out of a call thinking: that came out flatter than I meant it to.
That is the gap we care about. Not grammar. The other thing. The joke that lands. The phrasing that makes a hard request sound reasonable instead of pushy.
What we are making
Phrasely is a mobile app for the last stretch of fluency. Short sessions, fifteen exercises at a time, written by teachers instead of generated by a model. Two tracks run next to each other: Everyday English, and Business English for the rooms where the stakes are higher.
Marike, our co-founder, spent close to twenty years coaching executives, ambassadors and students from roughly 65 countries. Almost none of what she taught them came out of a textbook. We are putting it into an app because a private coach costs more than most people will ever be able to pay, and these phrases were never really a secret.
What this blog is for
Notes from the build, mostly. Phrases we argue about in Slack. Decisions we got wrong and had to redo. Every so often a piece of English that is genuinely strange and worth explaining, like the fact that "let's table this" means discuss it now in London and stop discussing it in New York, which has ruined at least one meeting for someone reading this.
We will not be posting listicles.
Where we are now
The waitlist is open and there are about 1,300 people on it. We are finishing the first sixty units and testing the exercise loop with a small group of learners. If you want an invite when it opens, drop your email in the box on the front page.
If you want to argue with us about a phrase, that is what the comments would be for, if we had comments. For now, just write to us.
Thanks for being early.