An Irish start-up has scooped a top European award for its revolutionary approach to teaching language skills.

LingleOnline won the prize for Language Technology Innovation at the LT-Innovate summit in Brussels. The event brings European executives involved in developing products using speech, translation or intelligent content technology together.

Lingle’s technology allows English language teachers to create exercises, lesson and resource materials quickly and easily from current news articles.

Chief executive of LingleOnline Ian Butler said the company was pleased to gain recognition as an innovative technology provider. He said the award would help the company take the next step in bringing its product to market.

The company originally began in the National Digital Research Centre, but was spun out last year.

The firm recently announced a collaboration with the British Council which will see Lingle’s technology used to generate in-context word lists and vocabulary exercises for language teachers on the Teaching English website.

LingleOnline has access to more than 200,000 articles covering a range of subjects from real publications, including The Irish Times and the Guardian, and adds thousands more every week.