If English isn’t your first language, there are lots of ways to learn it, such as memorizing Barack Obama’s speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Martha and Grant talk about some of the unusual ways foreigners are learning to speak English. Here’s the The New Yorker article about Crazy English that Grant mentions. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Unusual Ways to Learn English”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
The latest linguistic fad sweeping Japan is trying to master English by studying the speeches of Barack Obama. Grant, you know, there’s a collection of his speeches that’s a runaway bestseller in that country.
And there’s one enterprising English teacher who offers a six-month program based entirely on Barack Obama’s 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention. He breaks the speech down into 120 units, and you have to finish each one before you can progress through the program. It’s wild.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Yeah, but it’s this craze in Japan now. Martha, that reminds me of the crazy English fad in China. Did you see that New Yorker article from last year?
I saw it. I haven’t read it. Tell me about it.
There’s a fellow by the name of Li Yang who has, for a couple decades now, been leading these, I guess you’d call them massive classes. They’re almost like rallies for English where, you know, it’s not a classroom with a chalkboard and textbooks and everybody kind of quiet. He’ll do things like stand up on chairs. They have a picture and they’ll stand up on the chair and shout. And everyone in the audience repeats after him. And it’s more like motivational speaking about English speaking. It’s kind of weird.
So they quote in the article, he’s shouting at the top of his lungs, I, and the crowd shouts, I, back. And he says, would like to take your temperature. Because he’s, you know, that crowd is doctors. He’s teaching doctors how to speak English. And it’s crazy. He’s made a mint off of it. It’s a big phenomenon.
Of course, in the run-up to the Olympics, which of course now are over, there was this mandate in China for so many people to learn English. And this was one of the ways that they were doing it.
Well, it’s crazy the way people learn English, isn’t it, from other countries?
Yeah. You know, there are so many places where rote memorization is a technique that they believe in. And there are other places where they don’t believe in that at all. And, of course, there’s always the living dictionary approach. You know what that is.
The long-haired dictionary approach?
Yeah. It’s where you take a lover who speaks the language and go from there. Very handy. You get a great accent, at least. Your vocabulary might not be that big, but your accent can get really good if you’re learning through pillow talk.
That’s true. Well, if you want to tell us how you learn English best or any language, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-WAYWORD. Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
