A Different Way to Learn

Hey guys,

I have a neat story. My chiropractor was born and raised in China, but immigrated to Canada. When he came here, however, he could not speak English, not even one word. Even worse, he had no money to take classes to learn English, because he did not have any money when he arrived here. So, what did he do? Well, he knew that he would have to learn English to make a living, but in a way that he could afford. So, he went and bought a stack of cheap music CD’s. When he bought the CD’s, he made sure they contained a booklet with all of the lyrics inside. The idea was to hear the pronunciation of the words in the song. He listened to the singers and how the words were supposed to be pronounced, and then tried the pronounced word himself. While he listened to the words, he was looking at the booklet to see what each word looked like. This way, he could not only begin to recognize the spoken words, but also the written ones. I thought that this was a very clever way of learning a language. Today, after having learned the English language through music CD’s, he runs a successful chiropracting business and can speak English quite well. Talking to him now, you can tell he has a bit of an accent, but you would never have known he did not learn English the traditional way. Hope you enjoyed this little story.

Kristen Kerr