Learn From the Masters

The Toastmasters, that is.

In the last 83 years, four million people joined a non-profit organization called Toastmasters International for a common goal: to become a better speaker in front of an audience. They have achieved it through 11,300 self-managed clubs in 90 countries, attending a weekly club meeting, practicing speech in turn before the club members, and giving feedback to one another.

Toastmasters International is a smashing success for helping people overcome the fear of public speaking. It can be a great place for the non-native English speakers of intermediate-level or up to improve spoken English. You will get to know a group of supportive people; you will play various roles of running the meeting; and you will have many opportunities to speak.

If you go to gym regularly and exercise vigorously, you will be in a better physical shape; if you go to a Toastmasters meeting regularly, you will speak a better English.

You can find a club near you at the TI’s website.

Mad about English

The Toronto Star sent this report from its Asia Bureau: Mad about English: Chinese flock to learn. It told the story of two generations of Chinese–grandparent as old as 78-year old and kid as young as 4-year old–studying English together in the same classroom. And they are only a few among millions, according to the article:

China’s Ministry of Education says there are more than 100 million students studying English in elementary, junior and senior high schools, as well as college.

Across the country, English study is compulsory from the age of 9. But in Beijing and many other urban areas, students begin learning it from the age of 6.

No wonder British Prime Minister Gordon Brown flew to China this week to encourage more Chinese to learn “the world’s language”. A 100-million consumer market is just too bloody huge to be ignored.

Unconventional Methods of Learning

We always thought conventional way of learning language–sitting in the classroom and memorizing grammar rules, etc–is mostly ineffective, but we didn’t know there are so many unconventional methods until we read the article at International Herald Tribune titled Unconventional methods find a niche among teachers of English.

One of those is called Interhemispheric (we don’t even try to fake that we know what it means). The article explains it this way:

For Schiffler, the most powerful variation on his method – which he calls Interhemispheric Language Learning – has all the students in the classroom act out and sing the text at the same time as the teacher.

“When the students say ‘jump,’ they should jump,” Schiffler said. “Speaking and acting are very much connected.”

You get the idea. But the most unconventional method, in our view at least, is called The Silent Way. Here is how the article describes it:

In contrast, teachers of The Silent Way prepare no lesson plan, discourage memorization, never use a book and – as the name implies – rarely speak.

“I have had really bad laryngitis and the pupils never even knew it,” said Roslyn Young, a longtime practitioner of the method who now heads an organization promoting its use. “Sometimes the only thing I say during an entire class is, ‘Shall we start?’ “

We are sure they don’t have “Talk is Golden” motto in their marketing materials. But how exactly do people learn to speak with this method if they rarely speak?

We keep silent. You need to read the whole article to find out.

Learn From Average Americans

To score high in TOEFL, or to get ahead at job, is a strong motivation to study English, but it’s no where near to be genuine curious about the people who speak a different mother tongue. If you are obsessed with their life and culture, then overcoming the language barrier seems a small fish to fry.

There is no better project than StoryCorps’s Recording America to satisfy your curiosity while learning a genuine American English at the same time. Under the project, about 30,000 Americans from all walks of life recorded their life stories, mostly between two closed ones, like husband and wife, or mother and daughter.

Most of the stories are plain with little drama. But as they talk about mundane things like friendship, love, work, and struggle, the plainness comes vividly alive. It’s conversational, authentic, and original. Even listening to a fraction of the collections will give you a much better and realistic picture of Americans than from watching the whole season of Friends and Prison Break.

You can listen to the recordings at the StoryCorps’ site, or some of them at NPR, for free.

Sampling Audio Books at Audible.com

Audible.com offers tens of thousands of audio book titles, covering both fiction and non-fiction genres, through a monthly subscription. Depending on the payment plan, you can download one or two audio books each month.

The avid book readers who drive or walk a lot are happy to let their ears do the reading while their eyes can’t. They are the core customers of Audible. But those English learners would love Audible too because of a simple feature: You can listen to a free sample, usually several minutes long, of every book it lists at the website.

No matter what your reading tastes are, you are almost certain to find many books you enjoy at Audible. In case you find it hard to understand the book for adults narrated at the normal speed, you should begin with the books in the Kids & Young Adults category.

In a word, Audible’s vast title selections and convenient sampling feature make it a lot easier to follow the golden rule of self-study: always read and listen to something you are interested and can understand the most part.

“I Have a Dream” Speech

At the Martin Luther King Day, the national holiday to celebrate King’s birthday, it’s worth to revisit his most famous “I have a dream” speech.

Even if not for the purpose of studying English, you should dwell on this historical moment from time to time. It’s not only one of the most beautiful speeches given in English, but also a powerful transcendent rhetoric that has inspired millions of people.

For the complete transcript, please go to MLK Online.

U.K. To Export English

According to the British government, its current largest exports are machinery and transport, manufactured goods and chemicals. It might well be English in the future, according to the government’s ambitious plan recently announced by its Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Will the Bush government offer a similar deal soon?

A Golden Time to Learn a New Language

Whether you live in Bombay, Beijing, Brasilia, or Barcelona, this is a golden time for learning to speak a new language.

Without sitting in a classroom, anyone who has an Internet access can master a second language, if he’s motivated enough. Better yet, it may come amazingly cheap, if not completely free.

It’s all because of ever expanding Internet. Now, information flow and sharing are much more universal and efficient; the barrier and cost of communication among us are down to almost nothing. This is a sea change, as Amazon did to buying books and eBay to selling merchandise of all sorts.

It starts to having a major impact to language learning too. For a self-motivated learner, her daily routine can work out like this: read the news subscribed through Google or Yahoo News; listen to the podcastings at the BBC or NPR website; watch the online videos she enjoys at YouTube or CNN; talk to the friends she met at Myspace or KanTalk through Skype.

For many learners, it’s just more natural, and thus more effective, to pick up a new language this way. Sure, it still takes time to speak a new language well; learning a language is more like running marathon than 100-meter sprint.

It’s a lot easier to persist all the way through if you enjoy doing it as you go.

Teach the Mass English for Beijing Olympic

Marching toward the Olympic opening ceremony in August, the Chinese government is working overtime to finish up the stadiums constructions. The officials seem to be confident about the readiness of infrastructure. Being face-conscious and wanting to be a good host, however, they have a bigger challenge on hands, according to this Reuters report:

Worried that its citizens’ notoriously poor command of the language will embarrass the country and lead to unfortunate misunderstandings, the Chinese government has embarked on a massive program to teach the population basic English.

How can they get million locals to speak English in such a short period of time? Their solution sounds unconventional:

Some of the preparations, though, can look a little odd to foreigners.

Dressed up in a big blond wig, sunglasses, gold earrings and silk scarf, Zhi, 63, pretends to be a Canadian tourist while her classmates take turns talking with her.

“I am from Canada. This is my first time to China,” she intones in a thick Beijing accent.

“Welcome to Beijing, the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games,” another replies to her, standing in the front of the classroom.

Will it work? We’ll see in several months, when Zhi and her fellow residents meet a lot of real blonds, some of whom will definitely get lost in the streets of Beijing, and many can speak no more than two Chinese words Ni Hao.

The Last Lecture

Not expecting to live longer than a few more months, Carnegie-Mellon University professor Randy Pausch talked about his life’s lessons in his last lecture:

[For the full lecture (more than an hour long), watch it here (link) ]

Isn’t life beautiful?