With “Linsanity” driving the conversation about the NBA in Asia, and the All-Star game this weekend, international news outlet Reuters took the opportunity to write a story about English, baby! focusing on our English lessons starring NBA players.

“The strategy seems to be a hit with teachers and students,” says the article. It was certainly a hit with media outlets that syndicate Reuters ‘ content. The story was picked up by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, NBC, Yahoo! and many others.

This mainstream press follows some great attention from an outlet that is rapidly gaining attention in the education field, the PIE News (Professionals in International Education). They ran a profile of our company. We’re thrilled to be part of the conversation on their site.

Over at the Classical, a heady and fascinating culture and news site, a very well-respected basketball writer (formerly of Free Darko fame), put together a piece that goes behind the scenes of our English lesson with Dwight Howard. It’s definitely worth a read. And if there was any doubt that we are helping keep Portland weird, IFC’s Portlandia blog covered our unique way of teaching spoken English and slang as well.

We’re honored to have all these great words written about what we’re doing. Of course, we do love the camera here on English, baby! Fortunately, our local Fox station offered to produce a segment about our English lessons with athletes for a program called Oregon Sports Final.

Thanks so much Larry Fine,  Dan Thomas, Dan Sheldon, Bethlehem Shoals, Matt Singer and everyone else who contributed to these stories. We really appreciate it.

When people on TV shows run into celebrities in New York, it’s usually not in Brooklyn. But there are more people worthy of starring in a celebrity English lesson than you might think on the other side of the East River. On a recent visit to Union Pool to see Reverend Vince Anderson, a friend pointed out that the guitarist in the band was none other than Jaleel Bunton, drummer for Brooklyn-based, world famous band, TV On The Radio. In fact, Jaleel has DJed before at the bar where my friend works.

“Do you think he’d do a lesson for English, baby!” I asked?

“We can check,” he said.

So at the intermission, we edged our way through the crowd toward Jaleel. He immediately agreed to help us teach spoken English to fans overseas and suggested the alley behind the bar as a quiet place to do the interview.

I handed my friend my iPhone and asked Jaleel to talk about the title of a recent TVOTR song, “Will Do,” and explain how this phrase can be used. The result was this English lesson. He did a great job. You can’t even tell that he had no warning. Note the cars on the freeway overpass in the background.

Jaleel was happy to contribute to our mission to help people around the world learn slang, but after he explained the idiom “will do,” he took a moment to question its usefulness in present-day America. This didn’t make the final edit of the lesson video, but enjoy this outtake in which Jaleel expresses some concern that if ESL students from China come to New York and use “will do” in a conversation, it may not go well for them.

I may not be from Brooklyn, but I really think you’ll be fine if you use this expression anywhere in the US. And certainly, your girlfriend or boyfriend won’t mind if you use it like in the TV On The Radio song.

The Phoenix Suns have some of the smartest and most fun players anywhere in sports. We’ve featured some of their stars in our celebrity English lesson series before such as Marcin Gortat (before he was a Sun) and Channing Frye. But at a recent practice, we got some great new basketball slang definitions from Steve Nash and Grant Hill.

A two-time MVP, Steve Nash is famously good at assists and free throws. So we figured we’d stick to those areas of the game and asked him to start with a lesson on the term “dime.” He really went above and beyond by explaining the origin of the phrase.

Then we moved on to a lesson about the term “and one.”

It’s amazing to meet someone who fully embodies a quality all good players seek to have. Grant Hill has won the NBA’s sportsmanship award three times. So we asked him to teach a lesson about how the term “heart” is used in sports.

Finally, we were able to catch up with Jared Dudley, who we interviewed a couple of years ago. Jared is one of the most media savvy players in the NBA. He regularly posts behind-the-scenes videos of his teammates on JMZ, his own take on the gossip outlet, TMZ.

We asked Jared to teach a slang phrase that is popular at the moment, and he talked to us about the word “swag,” which is also the subject of a lesson by Zaza Pachulia.

These great new English lessons got finished up just in time for this article about English, baby! on the blog of Portlandia, a TV series on IFC that mocks our hometown.

Just before Dwight Howard was named as the starting center for the Eastern Conference All-Star team for the fourth year in a row, he became the latest NBA player to help English, baby! teach basketball slang. The Orlando Magic star definitely brought a lot of character to our English lesson/interview format. When I asked him to pose for a photo, he made the face you see here.

Dwight also got creative with the slang he wanted to teach. As this article in The Classical explains, we originally asked Dwight to teach the term “rejected,” a common slang term for blocked shots. But he said he doesn’t really like that term. So since we only had a moment with him, we just turned on the camera and asked him what he would like to teach. Here’s what happened.

Personally, I had never heard the phrase “beat it up” before, although in a previous basketball English lesson, Dwight’s former teammate Marcin Gortat said something similar. And since we’re all about teaching the latest, most authentic American slang, I think it’s great Dwight shared this term with us.

But that wasn’t even the biggest surprise of the interview. I had no idea Dwight would break out some Chinese phrases when I asked him about visiting China. Since more of our members come from China than anywhere else, I loved seeing Dwight use the English, baby! forum to connect with his fans there. The moment shows a side of Dwight that appeals to native speakers as well. The Orlando Magic posted the video on their website to share it with the hometown fans, and our friends at Australian basketball site A Stern Warning, shared the interview with their readership, too.