CRAZY ENGLISH

       How China's language teachers have become big celebrities
       Chinese people are becoming more and more obsessed with speaking English, and efforts to improve their proficiency mean that at some stage this year, the world's most populous nation will become the world's largest English-speaking country. Two billion people are learning English worldwide, and a huge proportion of them are in China.
       And sometimes it seems like most of these eager students are learning from Li Yang,who is the true folk hero of the Englishlanguage-training business. Mr Li founded the "Crazy English" movement, which now involves him visiting a dozen cities a month and lecturing in English to crowds of up to 30,000 people. His books sell in the millions.
       The principle is that "you can't learn to swim in a classroom"- so Crazy English teaches language learning as a form of mass activity. At a recent tutorial in Beijing, students passed large banners saying,"I can realise all my dreams" before entering the classroom to sample Mr Li's inimitable mixture of English-language teaching and motivational speaking. There is even a touch of the evangelist about him- though he is preaching to the converted - and the enthusiasm of the response is amazing, with plenty of armwaving, fist-raising and punching the air.
       The desire to learn the world's language of commerce is reflected in the way that English is everywhere these days. It's deeply fashionable but also part of a broader goal to encourage greater use of English to help boost China internationally.
       So the people turn to Mr Li, who started doing this 20 years ago and whose Guangzhoubased business is now vast."I talk to 10 million people a year, face to face," he says proudly."Back in 1988, China was in the process of opening up to the outside world but the whole Chinese educational system was based on tests. There were so many people learning English to pass the tests but they couldn't communicate."
       There are now 200 million Chinese at secondary school who are bored with tests, and Mr Li is still trying to change the way people learn to speak English.
       "This is a new method for Asian people,who are shy and introverted," he explains."My method can give people confidence very quickly. I try to simplify English for common people. I became an idol and a celebrity for Chinese young people because of this content. People get excited and I also tell them how to face difficulties and obstacles;I combine a lot of things into teaching."
       Most of his students are aged between 10 and 40, and they include professionals and students, lawyers and bus drivers. Many people in China still don't have the opportunity to travel abroad, so they are eager for ways to practise spoken English and correct their mistakes.
       Mr Li's reading materials contain inspirational - and patriotic - phrases, such as "Help 300 million Chinese people speak English fluently" and "Make the voice of China be widely heard throughout the world".
       A big factor in the craze for learning English was the pre-Olympic drive to make China more international, when even taxi drivers learned a couple of words of English.
       In the bookshops, you can still learn English the traditional way, reading texts such as Wuthering Heights , but you can also use books featuring scenes from Friends .China's most famous actress, Zhang Ziyi,has spent a long time learning English, though she claims she picked up her best phrases listening to rappers such as Eminem. English is now used, at times with hilarious results,on signs and posters around Beijing - property developers believe it gives great cachet to a development to have English hoardings,even if the language used is often absurd.Anyone fancy a "National Cream" apartment or a "Boning" flat? And the signs saying "Careful landslip attention security" or "The slippery are very crafty" demand attention.Watch your step.
       English-language training in China is an industry worth about 15 billion yuan (75 billion baht) a year, and there are more than 50,000 English-training organisations in China.In Beijing alone, some 200,000 people took English classes last year. Some of these help Chinese students study for the Toefl (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) needed to study abroad, while others help white-collar workers improve their oral English or their business and financial English.
       In China, English allows you to travel, to gain social advancement, and Englishlanguage teachers have become minor celebrities. Another giant of English-language learning is Dashan, a Canadian whose English name is Mark Rowswell and whose fluent Chinese has transformed him into the most famous Westerner in China - taxi drivers and passers-by point at him. His languageteaching shows, including programmes such as Dashan's Adventures in Canada , have made him a television legend.
       He also hosts shows teaching Chinese to foreigners - though his amazing Chinese skill annoys some incomers, who have been satirical of his ability to blend in at Chinese gatherings.
       But he is adored by the Chinese, especially for his mastering of the wildly popular xiangsheng (crosstalk) comedy style."You will often hear Chinese say things like,'Dashan is more Chinese than the Chinese'," says the man himself."But I think,first of all, that's a huge exaggeration. Secondly,it largely reflects the breaking down of barriers that I've worked on throughout my career.Chinese tend to pigeonhole people into clear categories - either you're Chinese or you are a foreigner. Dashan, at least to a certain extent, defies that sort of oversimplification."
       Dashan's status in China is such that he has been appointed as Canada's commissioner general for next year's Expo in Shanghai, heading up the whole pavilion team there. He's also the face of a Ford marketing campaign aimed at ChineseCanadian consumers.
       For Dashan, teaching English to the Chinese has transformed him into a senior diplomat.Indeed, he's not the only one. During a recent reporting trip to Kashgar, in the restive western province of Xinjiang - where foreigners,especially journalists, are not especially welcome - I was approached by a plainclothes policeman in the lobby of my hotel, who identified himself, sat down, and asked me,in English:"Do you feel safe here?"
       My heart sank. This was a few days before the riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang,in which scores of Han Chinese were killed by rampaging Muslim Uighurs, angry at Han China's growing domination in the region.
       "Do you feel safe here?" is a standard opening line when officialdom comes knocking in China, although it is usually delivered in Chinese, and I readied myself for a trip down to the station, or at least a lengthy interrogation about what I was doing in this hotbed of separatism at China's westernmost extreme.
       Instead, the man produced an Englishlanguage textbook, helped himself to a glass of my beer, and began to ask me questions."Are you loaded? Do you change diapers? I can count in English. Listen ..." he said,before doing just that, counting to 10,000 in English. Thankfully, once he was past 29, he started using every 10th number, but it was still a lengthy process. The policeman followed this with a strange moral tale about why bats only come out at night, which he had clearly learned by heart.
       He was definitely checking me out, and he knew I was a foreign reporter, as all hotels are required to register foreigners with journalist visas in their passports with the local Public Security Bureau. He took my mobile phone number. But what was significant was that he used the opportunity to sharpen up his English.
       All this does not mean, however, that English is yet spoken as widely, or as well, as it is in European countries such as Sweden,Germany or even France - and you still have a hard time getting around the place without being able to speak Chinese, even in big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing.The Independent