This week English, baby! is featuring a really fun English lesson with Shane Battier from the Houston Rockets. I came across this blog which determined that Shane is (or at least was, not sure what the current numbers are) the best at buzzer beating (specifically shot clock buzzers). So we asked him to teach “buzzer beater” and other last-second vocab.

After we approached Shane, we learned he knows a little Mandarin. He gets lessons every year before he goes to China for a couple of weeks to promote his Peak signature shoe. He was shy about sharing his full Mandarin vocabulary in the video, but he dropped a “ni hao” for his fans in China.

And boy, does Shane have fans in China. This Chinese news clip, from which I pulled the shot of the t-shirt above, shows the welcome he got while getting off a plane. The Chinese aren’t just big fans smart basketball and stellar defense, Shane’s profile is boosted by frequent airing of TV commercials he stars in (you can see most of them on Battier’s MogoTXT site). This blog post even has a quote from an NBA player who spent some time in China and got really tired of seeing Shane on TV!

I think it’s great that Shane is so well-known in China. He’s such a well-rounded an unselfish player, he makes a great ambassador for the US and basketball. He has a reputation for being a smart guy, and, in fact, he saved me when we were taping this interview. I started talking to him and then completely blanked out. I had to wait in the media room for a while because the team was late to their shoot around that day and I let my mind get sleepy! Anyway, when he saw I had blanked out, Shane said, “buzzer beater, man,” and reminded me what we were supposed to be talking about. It was clear he had thought about the definition of the term in advance. No wonder his is the best celebrity English lesson we’ve done so far!

2010 is still a few weeks away, but English, baby! has already got its first award of the year! Top Ten Reviews put together a list of the best ESL sites and we got the silver award. Yeah, I know, where was the gold? Well, you know what? Silver looks better with our orange and blue colors anyway. So there.

Seriously though, the review Wanda Richards wrote is the most in-depth analysis of the website put together by any journalist so far. She touched on every aspect of the site, from member submitted lessons to the chat room. It’s clear that she signed up for an account and spent some time–long enough to get our weekly newsletter which she wrote about too!

I especially love that Wanda came up with ways that English, baby! could be used by native speakers of English, such as finding pen pals overseas. But the best quote has to be this one:

English, baby! could be the poster child for social media integration for online English learning.

Thanks! That’s exactly what we strive to be. It’s nice to be understood.

Americans who speak French love to hang out together. I’ve found myself out with a group who at some point realized they all spoke French and decided to speak it right then. Let me tell you, I wish I knew I French too, because they were having lots of fun!

So when after filming an English lesson with French star, Tété, I went to his only show in the US this fall, it was no surprise to find the front rows full of people singing along and whispering to one another in French. And by the end of the set, Tété, came down off the stage and sang along with them with no microphone. You can read more about the show in the review I wrote for the Oregonian newspaper here in Portland.

But unlike my night out with friends that took an unexpected turn for the French, Tété is an inclusive kind of guy. When we met him at the recording studio, he gave us a tour. We wished we could have hung out all day! And even though I don’t know what they mean, I get the words to “Fils de cham” stuck in my head all the time now.

Following Nicolas Batum and Sebastien Le Toux, this is the third French celebrity English lesson we’ve had on English, baby! in the last year, more than any other nationality. But you just wait…we’ve got a celebrity English teacher from outer space coming up soon!

For more info on Tété, visit his website.