First off, this is my opinion of the man Liyang. I am a student learning English in China.
I got the basics on my own, and a teacher filled me in later. He then asked me how much money I made, and wasn't happy with "enough". He hounded me a bit, and since he is a guest at the school, and the school was getting some face (we are not the biggest school in town, but we are the only place he came too), I went along. And again, that is not really to bad, from what I know, my salary is a well known secret on the campus. The part that got to me, and I was to shocked and embarrassed, was when he offered some of his breakfast. Sure, sharing food isn't so bad, but cold food? And not letting me use chopsticks, telling me to eat with my hands ( cold, wet dumplings, with my hands)?
I found out after, one of his staff had made some kind of error, and he was rude to her, said something about her being on, or acting like she was on drugs. He also mentioned his daughters ( his wife is white I guess), saying they lived and studied overseas, and that they were very good English half breeds. I don't think that is acceptable in China, and I know it isn't in Canada. That is just rude.
Now I don't want people to think I am attacking a successful Chinese businessman. As a businessman I think he has done very well. I take issue with his claims of teaching, seeing as he has had no training as a teacher. The main point he stress's is that "learning English isn't easy, you have to put a lot of effort into it, and you will make mistakes, but that's how we learn."
I would counter this with "Anything you put effort into, where you make mistakes and still keep going will end in success". It is called hard work. If you check the slogans on his books however, "English made easy" is one of them.
The teachers played nice with him too, so I still went on stage with him in front of the students. I played his game, gave him face. But I did it for the students, and I can point out to them that both he and I have been saying "You have to try, fail, and try again. No point in being shy, have a try."
This is the part I protest. He is famous, but famous doesn't equal a good teacher (but being famous for being a salesman, that's pretty good). There are over 30 English teachers in the school, none of them use his stuff. If he has helped people learn in the past, that is great, but I have seen so many schools, programs and "shady" tutors promise easy results, take the cash, and the students/clients learn very little.
A Student, just by joining Dave's ESL Cafe can learn just as much, and this is free. I can save you the money his program costs.
1) Be prepare to work at learning English, when ever you have some free time, speak English out loud.
2) Get some English to read ( it doesn't even have to be correct, his has grammatical errors and punctuation mistakes). The point is you need some English to read. If you can repeat a tape or movie, that works to, Liyang tries to teach the pronunciation first and the meanings second.
3) Keep at it, try, fail, try again. Don't be Shy, have a try!
That is it.
This is the same method the schools use, but he spends time saying the government program is wrong. He is saying the same thing, just in a different way, lots of excitement, and a flashy show. To be fair, I use the same tricks in class, but I don't charge the students extra for my "crazy".
He does say the teachers are to strict with the students, making them so afraid to fail that they are not willing to try. I think we forget that high school students spend a lot time at school. Teachers in China have to teach manners and proper behavior to, remember some students live at school until the weekend or longer. The only adults students deal with are teachers. Imagine trying to teach math class, and stopping to cover being polite? Teachers have to be strict in China , they have to raise and teach at the same time. It is different in the west, but the west is the west, the east is the east. Some western methods can work, but so many of them focus on one-on-one time with students, they are just not practical in China.
The ending of my day with Liyang? Headmaster served him a poor lunch after (my first lunch with the Headmaster was very nice). Another teacher pointed that out to me, I was feeling a bit used/dirty after the show. But best of all, he gave every English teacher his complete collection of books/tapes... None of them are on any desks or in any office.