{"id":1104,"date":"2008-04-23T16:01:24","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T08:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2015-12-17T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T07:51:12","slug":"crazy-english-in-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2008\/crazy-english-in-the-new-yorker\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy English in the New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest issue (April 28, 2008) of the New Yorker<\/em> has an article on the China’s Crazy English (Fēngkuáng Yīngyǔ \/ 疯狂英语) method: Crazy English: The national scramble to learn a new language before the Olympics<\/a>, by Evan Osnos. <\/p>\n

Li Yang Crazy English (as it is properly known, after Li Yang, the company’s founder, chief spokesman, and head cheerleader) uses untraditional and emphatic but not always proven methods, including shouting and vowel-associated gesticulations, to help students overcome their fear of using English and remember the sounds of their vocabulary words. <\/p>\n

Chinese nationalism is also a big part of its approach. <\/p>\n

From the article:<\/p>\n

A long red-carpeted catwalk sliced through the center of the crowd. After a series of preppy warmup teachers, firecrackers rent the air and Li bounded onstage. He carried a cordless microphone, and paced back and forth on the catwalk, shoulder height to the seated crowd staring up at him.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne-sixth of the world\u2019s population speaks Chinese. Why are we studying English?\u201d he asked. He turned and gestured to a row of foreign teachers seated behind him and said, \u201cBecause we pity them for not being able to speak Chinese!\u201d The crowd roared. <\/p>\n

Li professes little love for the West. His populist image benefits from the fact that he didn\u2019t learn his skills as a rich student overseas; this makes him a more plausible model for ordinary citizens. In his writings and his speeches, Li often invokes the West as a cautionary tale of a superpower gone awry. \u201cAmerica, England, Japan\u2014they don\u2019t want China to be big and powerful!\u201d a passage on the Crazy English home page declares. \u201cWhat they want most is for China\u2019s youth to have long hair, wear bizarre clothes, drink soda, listen to Western music, have no fighting spirit, love pleasure and comfort! The more China\u2019s youth degenerates, the happier they are!\u201d Recently, he used a language lesson on his blog to describe American eating habits and highlighted a new vocabulary term: \u201cmorbid obesity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Li\u2019s real power, though, derives from a genuinely inspiring axiom, one that he embodies: the gap between the English-speaking world and the non-English-speaking world is so profound that any act of hard work or sacrifice is worth the effort. He pleads with students \u201cto love losing face.\u201d In a video for middle- and high-school students, he said, \u201cYou have to make a lot of mistakes. You have to be laughed at by a lot of people. But that doesn\u2019t matter, because your future is totally different from other people\u2019s futures.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Very soon Sino-Platonic Papers<\/em><\/a> will be issuing a long, critical study of Crazy English. Look for the announcement of that here in Pinyin News. <\/p>\n

further reading: <\/p>\n