One night when we were in China, a friend of ours suggested to me and John that we make English lessons out of the government TV channel, CSPAN. We said, “Are you crazy? Government is boring! People want to learn English from lessons about music and movies and sports!”

We understood on some level that Obama was an excpetion to that rule. We understood that people around the world love Obama and find him very interesting. So we made no fewer than seven lessons about him (all linked in the discussion section of this one).

And our Obama lessons were successful and got lots of comments, but I just learned that a Japanese book and CD that helps you learn English through Obama’s speeches has sold 400,000 copies. Isn’t that amazing? I’d be jealous if we were an ESL publisher. Instead, I’ll just take this as good news that people are happy to spend a little money on creative ways to learn English. Maybe we should add an Obama feature to our Super Membership.

Last 5 posts by jasonsimms

• Learning English with Sheryl Crow - August 10th, 2010
• "The Machine" Helps Lakers to 2010 NBA Championship - June 19th, 2010
• English Lesson at the Bowling Alley with Jared Dudley - May 7th, 2010
• Learning With The Polish Hammer - April 6th, 2010
• Olympic English Lessons in the Media - March 5th, 2010

Tags: go super, japan, learn english, obama, speeches, super member

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 7:30 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.