اشتیاق مفرط دنیا برای یادگیری انگلیسی

045 - The World’s English Mania

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast, today is a TED Tuesday lesson where I talk about short informational TED Talks and bring you the main ideas from the videos and also help clear up some of the language questions you might have,

TED is one of the best resources online for intermediate to advanced English learners, in my opinion, it is a wonderful resource.

Today is actually a TED Talk on English, the name of the video is called The World’s English Mania and the guy speaking is, Jay Walker, 2 billion people are learning English, so if you feel alone sometimes in your English learning journey, there are 1.999.999.999 other people out there learning English so don’t feel alone out there.

If you want a transcript to this episode, go to feelgoodenglish.com/member to become a member and when you get to become a member, you can get free transcripts to the episodes to help you become one of the successful English speakers out of the 2 billion that are learning.

So let’s get into the short, fun lesson.

In the beginning of the talk, Jay Walker talks about manias. A mania is when you have an unusually high level of excitement, an attention…Beatlemania, when The Beatles,the music group, came to the U.S., in the 1960’s, there was Beatlemania. People were crazy over the Beatles.

Hysterical meaning, teenagers that had lost their emotions, they were extremely excited, and overly emotional.

Pandemonium is when there’s people everywhere and it’s just completely unorganised, it’s a mess. Pandemonium in the streets. There was a lot of craziness happening, fights, and screaming, and crying. Sports mania, deafening crowd.

Deafening comes from the word, deaf, so it was really loud, you couldn’t even hear anything.

He talks about religion and the rapture and weeping, weeping… W-E-E-P-I-N-G is when you’re crying a lot, you’re crying very deeply. So people are such fanatics of religion because they cry at church and things like that, they’re weeping deeply. They’re really, really sad and crying very, very hard.

You’re weeping.

And then he goes into what is a new mania, a mania for learning English.

If you’re listening to this, you can probably agree with what he’s saying, then he uses an expression, they’re actually using this in a Chinese class where there’s screaming: I don’t want to let my parents down! I don’t want to let my country down! I don’t want to let myself down!

Teachers are screaming this first and then the children scream this after him, learning these phrases and believe it or not, you’re screaming out English like this around thousands of people, you will never forget those phrases, so it’s actually a very effective technique.

Anyway, to let somebody down, to let your parents down, to let yourself down is to disappoint them, so in this situation, the teacher is saying… If you don’t become a good English speaker, you will disappoint your parents.

That’s pretty intense. Putting a little pressure on the kids, huh?

But to let somebody down , to let your parents down , to let yourself down is to disappoint a person. Let him down. Did you let him down? Did you let her down? Did you let your parents down?

So if you notice you put the person in betweenlet and down then he goes into 2 billion people are learning English right now, all over the world. Some countries put a lot more investment into this compared to others, definitely something I’ve noticed but why are so many people learning English?

Well, according to the talk, opportunity. Opportunity for a better life, for a better job.

He goes into this big test out there called the Gaokao. By the way, if you’re a Chinese listener out there, send me an email and tell me about this Gaokao test. Have you taken this test?

Have you heard of it? I’d be very interested to hear your comments.

And then he brings up the question: Is Englishmania good or bad?

He says your native language is your life but with English you can become part of a wider conversation, and I agree.

Problems are becoming much more global and international, and our solutions are becoming much more global and international, so to be able to connect with this big world that we have now through technology, we have to be able to connect with each other, and English is the language that is helping us to this, I was fortunate enough (to be) born in an English-speaking country but I spent my time helping others learn English as well.

I am passionate about helping others connect to this wide world of English, and it’s not just because I want people to learn English but I want them to be able to connect with as many people as possible, learn as many new things as possible, fill their lives with what they want to fill their lives with, and not to be excluded. Most of the world’s content online is in English, and it has to be understood by the world so what he refers in this talk is, English is a turning point.

Talked about this in a couple of episodes before, a turning point is something that is changing something. Big changes are coming so English is a turning point in our world and I completely agree, technology has brought us to the point where we need to connect with each other and there’s no devices or machines yet where we can connect with each other through different languages without having a lot of problems.

So we are learning English, you’re listening to this podcast to improve your English.

You’ve had to go through school to improve your English but once you get there, you’re there, you will be there forever and your world will be opened up so much more, so keep going.

Ending the talk, he says, like harnessing electricity in our cities or the fall of the Berlin wall, English represents hope for a better future, a future where a world has a common language to solve its common problems, if you’re listening to this out here, send me an email, tell me why you are learning English or why you are listening to this podcast; I would love to hear from you and hear your thoughts.

What’s your big motivation behind doing what you’re doing right now?

Send me an email and tell me why you are spending your time and effort to learn English.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode, I hope you enjoyed it and learned something, go to feelgoodenglish.com, you can watch the video from TED on my website and you can also get the transcript to this podcast episode there as well. So head on over to feelgoodenglish.com, keep striving to become an excellent English speaker, now that you’re not alone, there are billions of English learners out there and you’re just one of them.

So keep moving forward.

Here’s a classic joke for you, I heard this joke when I was probably 8 years old,

What’s black and white and red all over? A newspaper!