Li Yang Reconsidered

I'm no big fan of Li Yang's "Crazy English," and I don't go out of my way to keep this dislike a secret. Generally, the only effect I see from Yang's teaching in my class is loud shouting during class activities and a heightened tendency to repeat (usually poorly) one or two nearly meaningless phrases.

Recently, I've run into a few adult enthusiasts of Li's in classes, and have adjusted my original opinion of his message slightly. (My overall opinion of him, that he's just a motivational speaker who's making money with a ridiculous gimmick, hasn't changed at all.) Li's central message, which sadly gets drowned out by all the shouting, is that in order to learn English, you have to be "crazy"--have to pursue something with all your heart. I realized recently, talking with Whitetooth about some of his experiences, that we've both gone through periods of studying so intently that others might think we were losing our minds: both of us have caught ourselves tracing hanzi on the bathroom wall while taking showers just to keep awake, and my morning routine of making forty sentences from the flashcards taped all over my apartment before letting myself use the bathroom in the morning might look at least masochistic if not perfectly insane.

A few of my adult students seem to have gotten this part of the message: that learning means work, and that you have to be inwardly motivated to keep up that work. Unfortunately, the distractions in Li's message make the central idea muddy for them. One student says he spends all his time outside of work and class studying: "Li Yang said he had to listen to the 'I Have a Dream' speech a hundred times before he understood. Last night, I listened to it fifty times, and I still don't understand. Tonight I'll have to listen to it another 50 times." (This student has since missed a week of classes at the school.) Another student has expressed unhappiness with the classes, because she's expected to think of her own sentences to speak during class sessions, which should be the instructors' jobs; she thought she'd be fluent by now, because she quit her job in order to attend classes all day, every day at the school.

So they've got the act like a crazy person part of the equation down; they just can't seem to make the connection that the craziness ought to be born out of the fatigue and frustration that studying according to a normal and sensible schedule creates. And they still can't tell the difference between realistic goals and "crazy" promises. Maybe after they see the absolute failure of "Crazy Chinese," which promises to teach children 1,000 more hanzi in half an hour's studying per day than they currently learn in six years of schooling--maybe after that they'll be able to see that a silver tongue is often attached to a big bag of grass. (大草包 or big grass bag is a common slang term for someone worthless.)

Shenzhen Goes Crazy
Originally Posted--06:14, 2007-11-05

And in the upcoming weeks it's likely to try and drive me that way as well. The reason? "Crazy English" has hit Shenzhen. "Crazy English" is already popular with a few of my more annoying students, who insist on listening and REPEATING everything I say as loudly as possible, and even my Chinese manager has apparently told Whitetooth that "it's good because you speak English loudly." Despite Li Yang's claims that there's more to "Crazy English" than just screaming English at the top of your lungs, none of his adherents seem to have gained anymore from him than shouting every English phrase they know.

I like Li's attempt to explain the "crazy" element of his program by saying that it's not to be questionably lunatic but "to dive into the thing one sets out to do." He's translating the Chinese term gongzuokuang, which we would translate as workaholic, and neglecting to note that the "crazy" part of the phrase just means crazy (as in kuangre--fanatic; kuangwang--deluded).

The cleaned up Answers.com article has this to say, and whoever wrote it made a good decision by not going to far into Li's biography (such as, for instance, mentioning that he almost flunked college). Of course, no one seems to notice (or admit) that Li is just a pep-talk performer, not a teacher. In the States, most would probably immediately think of Christopher Farley's motivational speaker from SNL. ("You're gonna end up living in a van down by the river!")

Though there are a few character-assasination sites on the web, Li doesn't really deserve them; he's not a cult leader, just a motivational speaker, which is exactly why he chooses to perform in front of crowds of 30,000 people. He hasn't done anything innovative, just capitalized on the Chinese ability to mimic sounds like automatons. (It's not getting students to repeat anything I say that's a problem; it's getting them to know what they're saying or to actually say it correctly--not say "shpeak," for example--or to use English in sentences on their own that's the rub.) He isn't shaking Chinese tradition in the least, just capitalized on the Chinese desire to do things as groups; every morning, Chinese work to do calisthenics in synchronicity, most of their performances devote at least half the time to choreographed dance, classes (English and otherwise) are conducted through endless repetition or rote phrases, and really the only new thing Li has brought to the table is yelling. (If you think yelling goes against Chinese tradition, sit at the next table over when a waitress delivers the wrong dish to a group of Chinese, when shouting is necessary to indicate displeasure.) And, of course, when folks shout in any language, pronunciation suffers.*

No, there's really nothing wrong with what Li is doing, unless you happen to be a waiguoren living in China. The enthusiasm at Shenzhen University (which has a bus stop on my way home) must already be spreading like wildfire, for I've already had my first college student step up to me and scream, "HELLO," inches away from my ear. My first response was to say nothing, after which the student shouted again, louder and closer. I slowly and loudly replied, "Wo ting bu dong," ("I hear but don't understand.") and honestly I can't understand--can't understand why he'd think I'd take the time to talk to him after such a rude greeting.

*I wonder if any native speaker can understand what he's saying at the end of the clip, say, about 3:34 on. The one part almost sounds like "Elvis Presley" to me; it's worth noting that his English is apparently quite good when he's just talking.