I was recently quoted as a source on teaching abroad in a post on boomster.com by Pam Baker.  It brought back some old memories about the time I spent in Japan and how our company got started. Here’s the full email I sent her for the post.

I taught in Japan right out of college and the experience led me to start a company that now helps a million people learn English.  Unlike many people who find a package deal that provides housing and a visa, I arrived in Tokyo in 1997 with the plan of teaching English until I found a job in business. I was able to switch teaching jobs several times over  six months until I got one I really liked and that paid well.

Shortly after, I began working for Hitachi, but I never forgot how eager all my students were to learn English and know more about American culture. In 2001 I returned to the US and co-founded English, baby! (englishbaby.com), which is now used by 1 million people to learn English through popular culture.

Teaching abroad can be very rewarding, but it can become a dead end after a while. I think it’s good to keep your flexibility so that you can make sure you have the best experience possible, and to always be thinking about how that experience can help you at whatever you do next. When we hire people to write lessons for our site, one of the main qualifications we consider is if the candidate has taught abroad and what they gained from their experience.

Looks like covering the Olympics from Beijing is turning out to be a challenging task, even for some of the biggest networks in the world. NBC, who spent $894 million for the rights to televise the games and will employ 2,900 people to make it happen, will be broadcasting some of its coverage from studios in New York.

Olympic fans have no reason to worry, however. All of Ebaby! TV’s coverage will be broadcast directly from the streets of Beijing and will show a rare look at the Olympics and the many interesting people involved.

Stay tuned for some of the most unique Olympic coverage you’ve ever seen.

I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to hear a high-level U.S. politician speak of our need as Americans to learn a second language. If you didn’t catch the clip of Obama’s speech that many people are talking about, watch it and see a man who understands how important it is for us to think beyond our borders and realize our world is much bigger than our one great nation. He gets it.

Immediately following his speech, a large group of people twisted his words and claimed that Obama thinks Americans should learn Spanish instead of immigrants living in our country learning English. They say how wrong he is and use it as political propaganda. He gets it again.

Today our country has walls on our borders, fingerprint machines in our airports, and people who still believe 9/11 was an attack by Iraq. The higher we build our fences, the further we distance ourselves from the other 6.3 billion people who share our planet. We’ve been fortunate to have a prosperous 200 or so years, but that won’t continue without joining the global party, something a number of other countries seem to understand so much better than we do.

Of course immigrants should learn English if they are living in the U.S. During my three years living in Japan I would have never assumed that people should be speaking my language. Obama is simply saying that the bigger issue here is that we should be learning languages ourselves.

While English, baby! won’t necessarily help Americans learn English, we hope it helps people see the importance of connecting with other cultures. Watching the millions of young people from around the world come to our site with their open minds and enthusiasm for a second, third or fourth language is inspiring. Their attitude is what will bring us together as a planet for a bright global future. They get it.

While it’s taking a fair amount of time, many educators are coming around to the idea that students can learn valuable skills from each other while interacting online, even in social networks.

The Economic Times reports that according to a new 6-month study by the University of Minnesota that watched the online behavior of students from 13 high schools in the Midwest, social network users were found to learn lessons in technology, creativity and “being open to new or diverse views and communication skills.”

How about that? Sharing ideas can encourage learning.

A student-empowerment movement is happening. Learners are becoming more reliant on their peers and less reliant on their teachers to disseminate information. Sure it’s valuable to have an English language teacher help correct grammatical mistakes, but it can be just as helpful when a friend shares that the most important phrase he learned on a recent budget trip to New York was “Where can I get some pizza?”

Teachers are an important educational resource but students often do a better job sharing real-world experiences. What sounds more engaging – memorizing how to ask directions or listening to a friend tell the story of how she misunderstood a bus driver and instead of riding to San Diego, she ended up in Las Vegas? A little bit of context goes a long way.

We’ve run a few surveys on English, baby! recently about the U.S. presidential election. As the race for the closely contested democratic nomination gets closer to the end, it looks like the opinion of some undecided Americans might be swayed by members of our site.

The Oregonian, Oregon’s daily newspaper, ran an article today titled, “World’s young adults say ‘Barack, baby!,” which covers the thoughts of our members regarding the election and who should win. While our first survey last year had Clinton in the lead, the current survey shows that opinion has flipped and Obama is now the favorite.

As the people of our world become more connected, major decisions such as presidential elections of all nations become more important to everyone. And to have the opinions of our members published here in the U.S. is a sign that Americans do care about foreign relations and our contribution to making the world a better place.

Our polls were also picked up by the World Wants Obama Coalition’s website in a post called Swing to Obama among English language students. Their site helps explain the drastic shift in world opinion about our election. There have been Obama rallies around the world, like this one in France.

It’s so interesting to hear a mix of French and Obama’s slogan, “Yes we can!” We’re glad that we have been able to quantify some of the global attention to this election and that the American media is taking an interest in it.

Image: from the Oregonian’s home page.

I was surprised to read an article titled “Switch to Espanol” in the Washington Post yesterday that claimed it might be “time for our political leaders to turn off the English-language TV and encourage good citizens to learn Spanish.”

Joe Mathews, the author, says that all 3 presidential candidates and the governor of California are wrong for believing that English should be the official language of the U.S. Why? Because the quality of Spanish local news is higher than English local news in Los Angeles.

Joe is obviously missing the point. Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Schwarzenegger all agree that it’s necessary for the residents of our country to learn English so that our country functions in a more efficient and unified manner. For us to tackle our immigration issues, English must be the official language and we must do everything we can to support those who are learning it. The better non-native English speakers living in the U.S. are at speaking the language, the more they can contribute not only to our country, but to the well-being of their own families.

I’m all for trying to improve the quality of local news content. And the next language I learn will be Spanish. But we absolutely cannot confuse that topic with one much more important and pressing for us as a nation – helping people assimilate into our country, culture, and language.

Gordon Brown had some interesting things to say about the English language on his recent trip to the U.S. According to The Press Association he is trying to encourage more people around the world to learn English.

The Wall Street Journal reported Brown saying that he’d like to see the US and UK work together on the initiative and “strive to make the international language that happens to be our own far more freely available across the world.”

It seems that Brown sees multiple advantages to the US/UK initiative, including a reason for the two countries to work together, encouraging use of the language we already know, and “bringing people together.”

What the article didn’t mention was the benefit to the learners around the world who might actually get more access to English as it becomes more “freely available” through a cooperation of this nature.

Hopefully learners get the most value in this deal and are given the opportunity to drive the process. Has the British council asked them how they would like more access to the English language? If this partnership materializes, we’d like to see the groups begin with feedback from learners, then provide what’s most needed.

We’d also love to help.

We recently found a good article in the Shanghai Daily about how so many learners are taking the fun out of learning English. Does it have to be so painstaking, and is there proof that no-fun learning is more efficient?

It’s amazing to me that most people believe learning English and having fun are mutually exclusive. After years of painfully trying to learn the language by memorizing grammar rules, how often do students end up at the promiseland of fluency? Rarely.

People are trained that the harder they work at something, the greater the rewards. I agree with this principle and if your end goal is to be really good at diagramming sentences, then work hard and study them every night.

However, most learners aren’t studying English to analyze sentences or become linguists. They want to communicate, interact, and socialize – and here’s the key – with other people.

While books and rules remain important to build a sound foundation for the English language, genuine human engagement will take learners to the communication level they desire.

The best part about the social component of learning English is that it makes learning fun. Take any hobby or interest that involves other people and do it in English, making the language part of your lifestyle. Instead of spending nights memorizing arbitrary vocabulary lists, join a bowling league, hang out at a sports bar, or find your nearest hiking club. The possibilities for practice are endless. You’ll feel your improvement every day and even have some fun at the same time.

We’ve been very interested to see what the international community thinks about the upcoming U.S. presidential election. After years of watching global opinion of the U.S. slide, there seems to be a good amount of optimism for the future.

We ran our first U.S. Presidential election poll back in June of 2007 and saw that 55% of our members favored Hillary Clinton as the next president, with 22% favoring Obama, and 7% favoring Giuliani. The Clinton name is very recognizable around the world and it’s understandable that she would be the favorite among our members.

We posted our second U.S. Presidential election poll in February 2008 and the numbers flipped. We now see 55% of our members in favor of Obama, 35% for Clinton, and 7% for McCain. It seems as though there’s something about Obama’s message that’s resonating with the world.

I had the opportunity to see Obama speak in Portland the other day and was definitely impressed. Even got a nice handshake from the Illinois senator. Clinton is coming through town this weekend and I look forward to watching her as well.

We’re going to keep close tabs on our members’ opinions as the democratic race continues, and then follow the general election. It should be an interesting ride and with the world getting flatter, international opinion matters more than ever.

Check out the Ebaby! lesson about the election.

I read an interesting article in today’s Taipei Times that addresses the value of the current trend of teaching English to children at an earlier age. It seems as though many people believe that if they can just start studying earlier, students will have more time to learn and end up better speakers. The author of the article describes this trend in Taiwan, but questions its validity and concludes with this point:

“Perhaps the issue of how early EFL students start to learn English is not that pivotal. The crux of the matter is whether or not the students will continue to acquire English after school. I’ve interviewed numerous adult learners who began to learn English after 13 and now have a native-like proficiency. The one thing they have in common is that they use English every day, whether it be watching TV programs or movies, reading English newspapers or popular novels, or other methods.

Therefore, English teachers need to ponder a more crucial issue: how to make their students still willing to involve English in their lives after leaving school.”

We believe that a classroom education is a crucial component of learning English. But turning that foundation into natural language use requires another step, which is lots of practice in context-rich environments such as having conversations with native speakers, listening to native speakers having conversations with each other, and being exposed to native English speaking culture.

The easiest way to get this experience is by living in an English speaking country where access to speakers and culture isn’t a problem. The challenge is that cultural immersion is only available to a small percentage of people.

English learners who can’t make that move must find a way to make English part of their daily lifestyle. They might be harder to find, but there are plenty of ways to simulate immersion such as reading English news, finding a language exchange partner, or spending time in environments where native English speakers hang out.

We urge all of our members at Ebaby! to actively participate in school, but to help them reach the next level and truly grasp the English language, we do everything we can to make practicing English fun and engaging in an effort to make using it part of their lifestyle.