“Five languages are too much! That’s crazy”
This is what a Chinese friend of mine told me recently after she found out the number of languages I speak.
I had never looked at it this way. But may be she has a point.
You do have to pull yourself through some crazy stuff if you want to learn a language.
Then, there are times when you are tired or sick, and you happen to mispronounce a word. Your friends give you that look. You are no longer the person they used to know. You have just morphed into a monster from the lagoon and are regurgitating gibberish mixed with greenish foam at their feet.
That’s why I was so intrigued to find out about Crazy English.
The Chinese entrepreneur/motivational speaker Li Yang came up with this method to teach English. He encourages his students to shout English sentences at the top of their lungs.
He draws enormous crowds from all over China. The 2008 Summer Olympics’s Organising Committee has hired him to help make sure that visitors will be taken care of by people with sufficient English language skills.
He uses motivational sentences like: “I can totally conquer English. I am no longer a slave to English. I am its master. I believe English will become my faithful servant…”.
Li Yang’s technique taps into the dreams of millions of Chinese who see English as a passport to professional success and wealth.
I have to admit it…. it is a little creepy, but the psychology behind Crazy English is fascinating.
Li Yang has been able to turn learning a language into a life-changing experience.
He is selling hope packaged in exercise books. And he has managed to turn the anxiety that everybody experiences, when uttering new sounds, into an outlandishly joyous experience to be shared with thousands of people.
All this reminds me of how learning a language has always been about much more than learning grammar and new words.
A Czech friend of mine has never been able to learn English. During the cold war, she had learned French and Italian, two languages considered “neutral” by the regime. English continued to have that “capitalistic” connotation in her mind. She knew that learning it would have helped her a great deal in her work. She just could not overcome the mental barrier.
I am beginning to wonder whether it wouldn’t be more effective to deal first with the emotions we attach to a language.
Wouldn’t grammar and vocabulary follow much more easily once we have taken care of that?
Photo: thanks to newyorker.com
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