Our latest celebrity English teacher is one of my favorite musicians: Sheryl Crow.

I went to Sheryl Crow’s concert to write about it for our local newspaper, The Oregonian. It was an incredible performance. She had so much energy that all 6,000 people there were standing and many were singing. Read my review if you’d like to hear more about it.

Backstage, Sheryl agreed to do an interview for English, baby! I tried to explain it to her beforehand as best I could, but she looked a little surprised when I mentioned her teaching English once we started recording! She was a great English teacher though. She’s very mellow and down to Earth. She seems like such a nice person.

The video was a hit with our members. Many of them are big fans of Sheryl Crow. When I teased them with one of her lyrics on our facebook page, a lot of them guessed correctly which artist I was talking about. But I was surprised to see some comments on the English lesson from members who hadn’t heard of Sheryl Crow before. I guess there are some corners of the world she hasn’t rocked yet!

I was happy to see that some Sheryl Crow’s longtime fans here in the US were into the video too, even though they’re high level or native English speakers and don’t need the English tip. My/be Angels, a Sheryl Crow fan site that has been around for more than 14 years, added us to their video page. Probably the most unexpected place to pick up the video so far was this Argentine Rolling Stones fan site. They picked it up because Sheryl talks about playing with Keith Richards in the interview.

We’ve got more famous English teachers lined up so stay tuned!

Last night the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics to win their second NBA Championship in a row. It was also the second for Sasha Vujacic, a point guard from Slovenia who was one of the first NBA players to appear in English, baby!’s celebrity English lessons. He and Kobe Bryant are good friends and they did a lot of celebrating after the victory (as you can see in the photo).

Sasha had a bit of a tough year with some injuries, but in the last few seconds of last night’s game, he made two free throws to secure the victory. Bu could he ever really have missed? He is of course, “The Machine.” Here’s the English, baby! lesson in which he explains the meaning of his nickname.

After the game, lots of reporters wanted to talk to Sasha about the free throws. This article has a video that shows his post game interview. It sounds like he will enjoy his summer!

The Phoenix Suns were here in Portland to play against the Trailblazers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. I had approached some of them about doing celebrity English lessons for English, baby!, but hadn’t heard back. I figured they were probably too busy staying focused.

But then one of my friends posted on facebook that the Suns were hanging out at Grand Central Bowl. This was very exciting news because it’s just across the river from our office and we know it’s OK to film there–we shot some scenes for the beginning and end of our Winter Olympic videos there.

Everyone was gone for the day from the office, so I sent a taxi for Devan at her house. Normally she just acts in our lessons, but she was the only person available to hold the camera! On the way over to Grand Central, I made a plan to have Channing Frye introduce me to Steve Nash so I could interview him. I came up with some questions.

The facebook post made it seem like the whole team was at the bowling alley. I pictured them bowling against each other in small teams. But when we arrived, we found there were only a few players, Amar’e Stoudemire, Jason Richardson, and Jared Dudley watching the NBA Playoffs on TV.

Quickly, I had to come up with new questions for each. After gathering some courage, I walked up to Amar’e, explained who I was, and asked if he’d like to do an interview. He was nice as he declined, saying, “Nah, I’m good.” Jared overheard me explaining to Amar’e that English, baby! gets a lot of traffic in China.

“How much traffic do you have in China?” Jared asked.

I told him and gave him my card.

“I’ll hit you up sometime,” he said.

“Oh come on, let’s do an interview right now.” I replied.

He agreed. But as we began to set up, I realized that in my hurry to get to the bowling alley to catch the Suns, I forgot to put a tape in the camera! Jared said he was going to hang out and watch the rest of the game (Milwaukee was playing Atlanta). So we ran back to the office and came back. He was still there, and still happy to be interviewed, thank goodness! What a good guy. And what a good interview too. He’s a natural on camera. No wonder he makes daily videos and posts them to his twitter account. He even let Devan get a picture with him, which you see above. Without further ado, the interview video. You can see the whole lesson here.

As part of our ongoing celebrity English lesson series, I recently got to interview Marcin Gortat of the Orlando Magic. He is the first Polish born player in the NBA and nicknamed “the Polish Hammer.” Actually, I’ve heard that he prefers “the Polish Machine,” but I just think the hammer is so much more unique and fitting. I hope he changes his mind.

Normally, I go into these interviews knowing what the lesson will be about. But in this case, I tried something different and asked Marcin to pick his favorite basketball slang on the spot just before we started shooting. He chose “beat a shot.” Watch it below or see the full lesson here. Or you can even read about it in Polish on Marcin’s official website.

That night after the interview, I went to the game and watched Marcin and the Magic fall to my Portland Trailblazers. Marcin had a great game though, and every time he dunked or blocked a shot I stood up and yelled “bring down the hammer!” Then I went back to cheering for the Blazers. I must have confused a lot people around me.

If English, baby! were a country and English lessons made at the Olympics were medals, with 14 different English lessons from this year’s winter Olympics in Vancouver, we would be in 7th place in the medal count, right between Korea and China.

Among our gold medal victories, you could count the two lessons we created with gold medalist figure skaters Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue, who helped us teach “lift” and “head over heels.” The Willamette Week newspaper took note of these lessons. But China is completely head over heels for them. One of these got more than 60,000 views on 56.com in the first week, and the other was just posted on the learning homepage at china.org.cn!

Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue are Olympic legends. But we also had the pleasure of meeting some young athletes at their first games. Half pipe snowboarder Liu Jiayu taught our members what it means to ride “goofy” and along with her teammates Sun Zhifeng and Cai Xuetong, what it means to “drop in.” I’d say these count as gold medals as well if only because CCTV (Chinese state television) was there for the lessons as well and did a story about the athletes testing their English skills upon arriving in Canada.

Without a doubt, our funniest lesson of the Games was “cold as ice” which we filmed at the men’s luge competition. “Pass the torch” was also a standout because we got to interview someone who carried the Olympic torch. These must be worth silver.

So in the bronze category are all the lessons we created without the help of a competition or athlete, but on our own with the people we met in Vancouver. These Olympics were such an incredible party–the streets were always packed with people from all over the world. We met a lot of them in our lesson on “break the ice,” when we went shopping for ice skates in “cheapskate,” and when we raced them on the ice at Robson Square to illustrate what it means to “fly by.”

Our local NBC affiliate even did a story about our Olympic victories. It’s a great clip, and it was so cool to see our logo in the center of the NBC Olympic Zone!

Of course, there were times when we took some spills, had to smooth over problems, and got distracted with our heads in the clouds. But in the end, I succeeded in saving my friends, which was the goal all along! It’s cool that everyone from NBC to CCTV and EducationNews.org to our local paper took note!

And we can’t forget, that like any good Olympic team, we had a great sponsor. Thanks ETS! TOEFL – go anywhere from here.

Olympic gold medalists Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue on English, baby!

Just when we thought interviewing the Chinese snowboarding team was as good as it could get for us during our visit to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics to help our members learn English, we got an incredible opportunity. A few days after winning the gold medal in pairs figure skating, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo met with English, baby! outside the skating practice facility in Vancouver.

This couple is one of the best stories of the Olympics. After skating together for more than 17 years, Zhao Hongbo proposed to Shen Xue on the ice in 2007. This year, the pair came out of retirement to try for Olympic gold, the only championship they had not yet claimed, and in Vancouver, their dreams came true.

Our dreams came true when Honbgo agreed to lift Xue for us in this lesson on the term “lift.”

After we got to know each other a bit, we asked Hongbo and Xue to do another lesson on the phrase “head over heels.” You can really see how warm these athletes are in this rare look at their personal side. This video was an immediate hit in China. It got more than 50,000 views in the first weekend on this Chinese video site without us promoting it at all!

As far as we know, this was the only English interview Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue gave while in Canada. We are so honored to have been able to participate in a little bit of their gold medal moment.

申雪和赵宏博是人人稱羨的情侶，赵宏博在東京世錦賽比賽結束後向申雪的求婚，是個大家都知道的浪漫故事。訪問前可以看見申雪用手幫赵宏博梳理頭髮， 夫妻關懷之情自然流露。

先問他們怎麼學英文的，赵宏博先說 “在學校學的“，然後一時語塞，申雪馬上替赵宏博接口用英文說 “但是不夠“ 。他們的感情也在他們時時甜蜜微笑相擁時展露。

因為希望可以請申雪和赵宏博教大家什麼是 “Head over Heels”，我們也問了他們何時知道他們深陷爱河的，申雪和赵宏博異口同聲的說“2007年”。再問是突然有一刻感受到他們深陷愛河呢，還是慢慢體會到的，申雪回答，他们在一起多年了，愛情是慢慢产生的。

这是他们身为一对已婚夫后首次参加奥运，还获得了奥运金牌。赵宏博說 “我们知道，即使我们没有拿到冠军，我们也会开开心心的体验这次奥运会”。
赵宏博解释说，夺得金牌并不比与妻子一起比最后一次比赛重要。很明显的，他们互相深爱。English, baby! 覺得申雪和赵宏博把 “Head over Heels”教的很好。

English, baby! 的网站访客来自世界各国。我们经常访问名人、运动员、和演艺人员，并请他们教英文，帮助世界各地的人学习英语。这次我们很高兴有机会访问中国冬奥会金牌赢家赵宏博和申雪。我们知道他们在中国及世界滑冰界里大有名气，他们能够在十五年的专业运动生涯结束前拿到冬奥金牌，划下完美句点，全世界都为之感动。

在访问中，赵宏博、申雪展现了他们优秀的英文能力及绝佳的亲和力，问到他们知不知道什么是一个“Lift”，赵宏博轻松回答并表示是他们滑冰节目里三项之一。申雪的话比较少，但是可以看出她和赵宏博之间深深的默契，当问他们可不可以亲身示范一下什么是 “Lift“，申雪将双手交给赵宏博，我们眼前的下一幕就是赵宏博轻而易举的将申雪举在半空中！看过这英文视频后，我们相信English, baby!各国的会员都学会了一个新英文单字！在这里看赵宏博和申雪示范 “Lift”!