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Crazy English
1. What is the best way of learning English? this is a typical non-traditional English learning example in China: crazy English. His method is basically “To shout out loud, you learn”, he believes that learning English with movement and shouting can improve pronunciation because people can hear their voices. In the two decades since he began teaching, at age nineteen, he has appeared before millions of Chinese adults and children. However, his method neglects the sociocultural context. All students need to do is follow him and read loud in the notion of “practice makes perfect”. Why do people choose this way to learn English? Is it necessary to emerge into a target language culture?
2. Is he an educator? He routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand people or more. Some fans travel for days to see him, in this sense, he is more than a super star rather a teacher. From the picture, Li is more like a leader, leader of a huge business- English learning. “Li showed no aptitude for languages during his childhood, and in his early youth he was so introverted that he was afraid to talk to strangers or go to the cinema alone. In university, at first he busied himself with books full of exercises, like all his classmates, but one day he found that his study effectiveness was much improved when he read the text out loud. By enunciating what he was learning, he felt more confident and courageous, and furthermore, that he could focus his attention more closely on studying and therefore have a clearer memory of what he had learned. This success inspired Li Yang.” (China Today) Li gives all students in China a strong faith: no matter who you are today, you can achieve success and you can speak perfect English.
3. He is also a successful non-native English language teacher without any learning experience out of China. He knows what people needs, he knows the struggles Chinese students have, he also knows the whole situation of English learning in China. Although native English teachers are priviledged, from the picture, we can tell that Li as a founder ,as well as teacher, has more power and influence to the English learning in China.
Lost of each language means human beings lost a part of history and culture. The language in danger is an important social issue just like animal extinction, resource depletion and so on. English becomes the mainstream language that younger generation are pursuing. I believe school can transform the reality by raising students’ awareness of the dominant language and minority language. I am pround of being a Chinese, for part of the reason is because the long-last civilization and language. I cannot imagine one day I can not use Chinese to express myself, who will I be? What can I say and where do I belong to??
The video is “The lost of translation” made by CNN. In order to welcome people all over the world for Olympic 2008, China set off a new upsurge of learning and populating English. Some of the translation are quite local and make non-sense to foreigners that attract CNN’s attention. These are some typical Chinglish examples in the video .
My In class writing: When the question “who owns English” comes to me, my answer is everyone as well as nobody. First, everyone who speak English owns English because the figure of 1400 million people in the world, including first language speakers, foreign language speakers and so on, tells me that English is not the possesion of British or American people any more. Since English becomes common language in the media, business, political and cultural communication, English in different places become the mainstream of foreign language teaching no mater English is considered as official tool or people’s personal pursuit. People who speak English in this world speak their own English in terms of their condition of living or way of thinking. Meanwhile, I would like to say no one owns English, the standard of English in my school year is Cambridge English, but nowadays with spread of English in the whole world owing to globalization, English itself changes a lot. “Standard English” is becoming a vague concept for English learners. I Believe how people use the language depends who, when and why the person is using English. Everyone speak different English in different ways with different purpose. Therefore, English belongs to nobody. My two contradictory answers seems like a paradox literally but in terms of the language itself and standard English, the language lives in a paradoxical way.
As Bakhtin (1981) argues, “language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated—overpopulated—with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process” (p. 294). Language carries meanings, values, cultures, and so forth. What we understand a language depend on our sociocultural and political background, as well as our first language support. ““The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his [sic] own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293-4). However, everyone use language in different ways for different functions. Once language be personalized with intention, it is neither neutral nor the same. Making the language our own is a process of internalization, connecting language with our own beliefs, values, culture, and certainly, the context. Warschauer (2000) takes another position and states that “English is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. To declare that English is unequivocally harmful or beneficial is to deny the human agency that shapes how English is used in different circumstances” (p.515). Phillipson (2002) states that English is not culturally neutral, and to investigate the role of English’ in the world, it should be put in the overall “multilingual ecology and in global and local linguistic hierarchies” (p.12). Since English carries the leading culture, political power, media influence and technological meanings, the language itself is neither neutral nor pure anymore.
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