A letter, slid across the desk

Finally — a language that actually sticks.

You've tried the apps. You've memorised the vocab.
Maybe even taken classes. And nothing stuck.
You're starting to wonder if you're just not a language person.
You are. The method was wrong.

— Olly London · Tuesday afternoon
Olly Richards, founder of StoryLearning, with a stack of books behind him.
me. 2024.
SL 7 days free trial
No. 001 Start Your Free Trial 7 DAYS · FULL ACCESS cancel anytime · pick your language inside Begin
PS. 7 days free. cancel anytime. no subscription trap.
Olly's desk · May
4.8 of 5 from 61,420 course students · 7 days free. Cancel anytime. 13 languages · 125,000 daily readers · since 2014
what your first lesson looks like · six beats · no grammar tables · no parrot ·
opened on the desk

"I'm a beginner. how can I possibly read a story?" — good question. here are the six pieces that answer it.

Inside every Uncovered course, every lesson follows the same six beats. The story does the heavy lifting. You stay curious. The words stick.

I

You see it and hear it together.

A native speaker reads the story aloud while the words sit on screen in front of you. Your eyes follow. Your ears catch. You're not deciphering text alone — you've got sound and text at the same time.

play it twice if you want. nobody's timing you.
II

You already know thousands of words.

Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese — these languages share thousands of cognates with English. Words you already half-recognise. The course just points them out, one at a time, so you stop feeling like a tourist.

— see the postcard from Olly below.
III

You're walked through every sentence.

Olly's video lessons take real sentences from the story and pick them apart, gently, word by word. No grammar tables. No tense charts. Grammar just emerges, naturally, from inside the story.

sixty-something videos. shot at his desk.
IV

You're taught how to pronounce it.

A native accent expert shows you the mouth positioning, the rhythm, the small differences nobody else flagged. Not "repeat after me." More like "watch what my mouth does on this sound."

no microphone. nothing to perform.
V

You get the cultural context.

Where the story is set. Why the characters do what they do. What it means to drop a coin in a fountain in Sevilla, or to be offered yerba mate in Buenos Aires. The bits a phrasebook never tells you.

the part Olly enjoys writing the most.
VI

You re-listen. And now it lands.

You go back to the same paragraph that confused you on pass one. This time the words are obvious. The shapes have settled. That's the moment most students remember: "wait — I can actually do this."

this is the part that surprises everyone.
Hola from BA —

La científica scientist visita el laboratorio laboratory para investigar investigate el misterio mystery .

And you hear it. Read by a native speaker. At your pace.

That sentence is 80% English already.
You're not starting from zero —
you're starting from "oh, wait, I know that one."

— Olly, writing from Buenos Aires (again)

You don't understand everything.
But you understand more than you expected. — and that's the moment everything changes.

Start Your Free Trial 7 days free. Cancel anytime.
two postcards from the same year

One came back stamped RETURN TO SENDER.
The other one arrived.

Both were addressed to "a conversation in Spanish."
Only one of them ever made it.

From: Duolingo · Babbel · Rosetta Stone · classroom · phrasebook app ⟶ To: A real conversation, Spain
The Parrot Method.
"Repeat after me!"
  • ✗ The cat is on the table.
  • ✗ Where is the library?
  • ✗ 620-day streak. Still tongue-tied.
  • ✗ The words come from nowhere.
  • ✗ Drill, quiz, fail, repeat.
Postmark: Years 1 thru 18. never arrived.
From: a story you actually cared about ⟶ To: A real conversation, Tarifa
StoryLearning.
You read. The words stay.
  • ✓ A grandfather on a mountain. A panic. A novel he opens at 3am.
  • ✓ The smuggler from Cádiz won't shut up about the boat.
  • ✓ You want to know what happens next.
  • ✓ The words come from somewhere.
  • ✓ Read, listen, repeat-only-because-you-want-to.
Postmark: every week, since 2014. — still arriving.

"It's not that you couldn't learn. It's that nobody gave you a reason to remember."

pick your course · the languages wall

Thirteen courses.
Pick the one you'll actually use.

Every language is its own Uncovered course. Same method, different story.
Every course starts with a 7-day free trial · cancel anytime.

ESP 7 days
Hola

Spanish

español · Uncovered

To finally speak
in the marketplace.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Sevilla
Start Free Trial
FRA 7 days
Bonjour

French

français · Uncovered

To finally speak
over a coffee.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Lyon
Start Free Trial
ITA 7 days
Ciao

Italian

italiano · Uncovered

To finally speak
in your neighbour's kitchen.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Bologna
Start Free Trial
DEU 7 days
Hallo

German

deutsch · Uncovered

To finally speak
on the train.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Hamburg
Start Free Trial
PRT 7 days
Olá

Portuguese

português · Uncovered

To finally speak
at the fish market.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Lisboa
Start Free Trial
JPN 7 days
こんにちは

Japanese

日本語 · Uncovered

To finally speak
in the convenience store.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Kyoto
Start Free Trial
KOR 7 days
안녕

Korean

한국어 · Uncovered

To finally speak
on the kakaotalk thread.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Seoul
Start Free Trial
CHN 7 days
你好

Mandarin

中文 · Uncovered

To finally speak
with your in-laws.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Shanghai
Start Free Trial
HKG 7 days
你好

Cantonese

廣東話 · Uncovered

To finally speak
on the ferry.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Hong Kong
Start Free Trial
RUS 7 days
Привет

Russian

русский · Uncovered

To finally speak
over a long dinner.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. St. Petersburg
Start Free Trial
EGY 7 days
مرحبا

Arabic

العربية · Uncovered

To finally speak
in a busy souq.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Cairo
Start Free Trial
TUR 7 days
Merhaba

Turkish

türkçe · Uncovered

To finally speak
in the bazaar.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. Istanbul
Start Free Trial
DNK 7 days
Hej

Danish

dansk · Uncovered

To finally speak
at the bakery.

Self-paced course · 60+ videos · native audio. København
Start Free Trial

... and more courses on the way. Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, and Greek are next on the desk.

two postcards · for honesty

Is this for you?
Honest answer, one postcard each.

No course is for everybody. Here's who StoryLearning works for — and who it doesn't.

YES £1·50
If any of these are true

This is for you.

  • You're tired of "repeat after me" and want to actually understand.
  • You learn better through reading and listening than drilling.
  • You want to talk to in-laws, neighbours, friends — not pass an exam.
  • You're willing to give it twenty minutes a day for a few months.
— write us if it sounds like you. postmark · today
NO £??
If any of these are true

This is not for you.

  • You want instant fluency in 30 days. (It doesn't exist — sorry.)
  • You hate reading.
  • You want gamified flashcards and a streak counter.
  • You're prepping for a specific exam in two weeks.
— and that's completely fine. return to sender

"Not everyone needs a story to learn a language.
But the people we help — they really do." — Olly

postcards in this week

Six postcards.
Real names. Real handwriting.

We get a few of these every day. These were the ones on top of the pile this morning.

after 18 years of trying
ESP £1·50
"I'm 72. Last Tuesday I said good morning to the woman at the panadería. She said good morning back. I cried in the car."
— Margaret, 72
Málaga, Spain Spanish · 14 weeks
620 → 0 streak
ESP £1·50
"I am now on day 620 of duolingo and I don't feel like I've learned anything. Then I tried a story. After three weeks I had thoughts in Spanish. I'm sixty-eight."
— Bill, 68
Costa del Sol Spanish · 11 weeks
finally part of it
ITA £1·50
"My grandchildren only speak Italian. For five years I sat at their birthdays smiling at nothing. This year I told the joke about the dog and they laughed."
— Helen, 70
Bologna, Italy Italian · 6 months
for her
ESP £1·50
"Scattered her ashes on her beach in Tarifa. Had to speak on my own — and it was bad. Started reading Olly's stories the week after. I won't be silent next time."
— David, 65
Tarifa, Spain Spanish · 8 months
eighteen years, then a Tuesday
MEX £1·50
"Tried for 18 years. Books. Apps. Three classes a week. I would freeze at the till. Yesterday I bought tomatoes and made a joke about the price. The man called me 'amigo'."
— Susan, 74
San Miguel, Mexico Spanish · 5 months
"slow learner" — turns out no
FRA £1·50
"I'm 76 years old — a slow learner, I thought. Two weeks in, the stories made me curious. Now I read for thirty minutes before bed in French. I sleep better, too."
— Yvonne, 76
Nice, France French · 9 weeks
about the founder

Olly Richards.
writer, course-builder, occasional accidental polyglot.

Before the courses, there was a mountain. Three pages from Olly's actual notebook tell the rest.

found in my notebook

How a panic attack at 2,780m taught me the method — and the twelve languages after that.

Page 1 Mendoza, Argentina · 3 a.m. · 2004

I stopped breathing.

I got up at 3am to see the mountains from a hotel balcony at 2,780m altitude.

I couldn't go back to bed. My chest felt like a fist.

On the bedside table was a paperback in Spanish. Cien años de soledad.

I'd been studying for months. I knew about forty words.

I opened it anyway.

— had given up on classes the year before
Page 2 The same balcony · still 3 a.m.

And then something strange.

Page after page, I didn't understand most of it.

But I cared so much what happened next that I kept turning pages.

By dawn, the words had started doing a thing they'd never done in any classroom.

They were sticking.

Not because I'd repeated them. Because the story needed me to know them.

— first time in 4 years the words actually stayed
Page 3 Buenos Aires · two weeks later

I tested it in a café.

I sat down with friends.

I kept up with the conversation for ninety minutes.

They didn't switch to English.

For the first time in my life I had spoken a language I hadn't been taught to speak — only one I'd been allowed to read.

That's the method that became these courses.

— twelve languages later, still the same trick
Olly Richards, smiling, in a black jacket.
founder · 2024
Olly Richards, with a stack of books behind him.
reading, again.
UK £1·50
From the desk of Olly Richards StoryLearning Ltd. · London · SE1

I'm not a polyglot in the YouTube sense. I'm a man who got pulled through a Spanish novel by accident at three in the morning, on a mountain, in 2004 — and never quite stopped.

Twelve languages later, I've written 30+ books published by John Murray, Hachette, and Teach Yourself. Short Stories in Spanish hit #1 on Amazon in eleven countries. My YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers — most of them folks who, like you, finally have time and have run out of patience for apps that don't work.

I built StoryLearning to be the one course I wish I'd had on that mountain — thirteen languages, same method, all of it on lifetime access.

I'm forty-three. I still get the words wrong all the time.

The team replies to every email I can't get to within seven days. We try to keep things human about that.

Olly "Still Breathing" Richards
Olly's credentials on file, since you asked
  • 30+ books published with John Murray, Hachette, Teach Yourself
  • 13 Uncovered courses — one per language, lifetime access
  • 12 languages spoken (some of them quite badly)
  • 1.4M YouTube subscribers learning the unfashionable way
  • 125k daily newsletter readers, since 2016
  • 12 yrs refining the same simple method into these courses

(no certificates were harmed in the making of these courses.)

your course welcome packet

The course is waiting.
Slide the envelope open.

Pick the language you'll actually use. Start the course tonight.
The first 7 days are on us — no hidden fees, no subscription trap.

FROM: StoryLearning HQ · London
7d FREE trial
INSIDE: 7 days free to start your course.
YOUR PACKET CONTAINS
  • Full access to your chosen Uncovered course — for 7 days.
  • The custom story, 60+ video lessons, native-speaker audio.
  • Pronunciation training. Sentence-by-sentence walkthroughs.
  • Community access. Lifetime if you keep it.
Start Your Free Trial 7 days free. Cancel anytime.

$297 one-time Lifetime access 365-day money-back guarantee No subscription

"You've already tried repeating after the app.
This time you read a story. And the words stay." — Olly