BYU is a community with many international ties.
As a hotspot for returned missionaries and with a diverse span of language programs, it is recognized as a top school when it comes to foreign language education.
Two BYU students, Stephen Garner and Huey Kolowich, created the online platform UniLex to make language learning more simple and engaging for BYU students and anyone seeking to improve their foreign language skills.
UniLex works to pair language learners with native speakers. For example, an English speaker learning Spanish and a Spanish speaker learning English will meet online and then spend their time speaking in English and Spanish.
UniLex began as an idea between the two friends in their off-campus apartment.
“We’re both avid language learners,” Kolowich said. He grew up learning Spanish and English in a dual-immersion program, then spoke Spanish during his mission.
Garner’s journey was a bit different. He started speaking Spanish on his mission in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. Trying to communicate was frustrating at first, but he was diligent in his learning efforts.
“After speaking with a lot of people and having my [pocket] full of notes, I began to enjoy it more and more,” he said.
Both returned home enthusiastic about language learning. Kolowich in particular saw a largely unaddressed need among learners: improved access to conversational practice.
He was motivated to act on that idea, but didn’t know where to start. The missing piece was Garner, an entrepreneurship major who happened to be his new roommate.
The two had long brainstorming sessions, and with Garner’s aptitude for developing a business and Kolowich’s skills as a computer science major, their talks evolved into the UniLex platform.
Their main focus was to create an easy way for learners to have immersive conversations with native or highly skilled speakers, a skill they both know to be essential to good learning.
“You learn a language to communicate with other people,” Kolowich said. “That’s a process that doesn't happen in isolation.”
Getting started was slow at first as the two sought professional mentors to help guide their work.
After pitching their idea to countless educators and others in the language field, they finally met BYU Spanish professors Greg Thompson and Cody Martensen.
Thompson and Martensen had been experimenting with different conversation platforms for their students. Some were online, paid services and others were in-person pairings of students and native speakers.
“Students like the flexibility of the online [model],” Thompson said. However, he shared that there were several drawbacks.
For one thing, many platforms they sampled were very expensive, with each half-hour conversation costing as much as $15-20. If each Spanish student does one conversation a week for a semester, that adds up quickly.
Instead of a pay-as-you-go model, Garner’s and Kolowich’s platform would be a subscription based service. Thompson explained how this would significantly reduce the financial burden.
“[Each student] can do one [conversation] a week,” Thompson said. “Over 15 weeks, that's three dollars a conversation.”
Thompson and Martensen liked the idea of UniLex, and the program was piloted for beginner Spanish students during the Winter 2025 semester at BYU. Results were generally positive, though some minor issues were exposed.
Students occasionally had difficulty remembering to attend their scheduled meetings, and some conversations were missed as a result.
Another hiccup Garner and Kolowich considered was the supply and demand of language learners and speakers. For now, the platform is mainly Spanish and English based, but adding more languages could create traffic.
For example, a man who wanted to use UniLex for his friends who spoke Tagalog approached Garner about adding that option.
“The problem is, there’s a lot more Tagalog speakers that want to learn English than English speakers who want to learn Tagalog,” Garner said. In short, unbalanced ratios could leave some languages out.
To overcome this, the pair has come up with a creative solution: teaching language for charity. Just as one might spend time in a soup kitchen or cleaning up a park, they can spend time speaking with individuals learning English.
“[People] could donate money [to UniLex], but more than anything, [they can] donate time to converse with these people,” Garner said.
UniLex will continue to be piloted in BYU language classes. Garner and Kolowich have also been working with Internexus, a language-learning school in Provo.
The pair hopes that support for UniLex will grow in coming semesters and that through AI and other tools, they can make the program more advanced.