To his fans, Li is less a language teacher than a testament to the promise of self-transformation. In the two decades since he began teaching, at age nineteen, he has appeared before millions of Chinese adults and children. He routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand people or more. Some fans travel for days to see him. The most ardent spring for a “diamond degree” ticket, which includes bonus small-group sessions with Li. The list price for those seats is two hundred and fifty dollars a day—more than a full month’s wages for the average Chinese worker. His students throng him for autographs. On occasion, they send love letters.

There is another widespread view of Li’s work that is not so flattering. “The jury is still out on whether he actually helps people learn English,” Bob Adamson, an English-language specialist at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, said. The linguist Kingsley Bolton, an authority on English study in China, calls Li’s approach “huckster nationalism.” The most serious charge—one that in recent months has threatened to undo everything Li has built—holds that the frenzied crowds, and his exhortations, tap a malignant strain of populism that China has not permitted since the Cultural Revolution.

Read more about Crazy English via CDT.

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Post tags: Crazy English, Li Yang, Olympics preparations
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If you carefully listen to one class Li taught, you’ll sense something in his speech”nationalism. Li makes jokes about Japanese pronunciation of English and the sounds Japanese make while bowing. Laughing at the Japanese is a common pastime for nationalists in China. Li also talks about how Hong Kongers look down on people from mainland China who go shopping there. Li says that in that situation, he would pretend to be Chinese-American speaking Chinese with an American accent to scare the Hong Kongers. Chinese like to talk about how patriotic they are, and nationalism is a good tool to unite them. As history has proven, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were linked to patriotism by the government, which inspired many Chinese to devote themselves to help their beloved country reach one goal.

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Read the rest of Is Crazy English Here to Stay? (689 words)

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From The Global Voices Online:

Crazy English is a private education agency in which the founder Li Yang advocates a new method to study English; namely, to shout out antiquated English phrases and seize every chance to approach an English speaker for a conversation, all for sweeping the shyness away. Learners should scream deafening English out with all their strength. It has study centers all over China, and is so well-known that millions of English learners have taken its courses in less than a decade since its inception. [Full Text]

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Crazy English, learning English, Li Yang
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