Giggle your way fluent
92%
of students rated the game 4 or 5 stars
5000+
students age 14+ have played since 2023
"Funny", "Creative", "Changed the way I see language"
are some of the most frequent words players use when asked to describe playing the game
THE PROBLEM
Your students know the grammar. They just won't speak.
Intermediate plateau is rarely a vocabulary problem. It's a confidence problem. Learners who can conjugate perfectly still go silent the moment real communication is required, because they've been taught that mistakes are failure.
Private Joke ® makes mistakes, curiosity and humour the whole point. When the stakes are lowered, students feel more able to express themselves.
HOW IT WORKS
Think Balderdash. Add language science.
A card game built around untranslatable concepts, laughter, cultural nuance, and invented words. Players invent a word for a prompt. Half the cards have a real British English word on the reverse. Half don't. Nobody knows which.
The result is a classroom where students take risks with language. Which is exactly what fluency requires.
HOW WE WORK TOGETHER
1. Teacher Training Session (live, remote)
A 90-minute live session for you and your team. You experience the game as a learner, then unpack the pedagogy — why humour works, what the research says, and how to use Britwit effectively with your specific students. You leave ready to run it on Monday.
2. Print License
Print and play Britwit with your classes as many times as you like. Includes the full card deck, facilitation guide, and a simple feedback template to measure student confidence before and after.
3. Annual Digital License
New card packs, updated facilitation resources, and ongoing support — all included. For schools that want to keep the experience fresh year-round.
Meet the Founder, Olive Halsall
MPhil Education, University of Cambridge
I built Private Joke ® because the research on play, humour, and language acquisition is compelling, yet (almost) nobody has packaged all three into a useful learning tool. Learners don't plateau because they lack vocabulary, they plateau because they're afraid to sound silly. Private Joke makes sounding silly the whole point. And when it does, something remarkable happens: people start expressing themselves in the target language, personality included. I've spent nearly a decade working with language learners across Dubai, Shanghai, London, and Monaco. This game is my attempt to make the conditions for real fluency available to every learner.
Kickstarter callout : 🚀 130 backers raised £4,586 on Kickstarter to bring Private Joke ® to life in 2023. The King's School Canterbury and EA Games were among our early testing parners.