"Crazy English Echo" magazine

  When I started to practice English last year, I went to book store and searched for some English books. There were lots of English grammar books, idiom books, vocabularies books and books taught to write decent English. I concluded that such books all aim to "crack" English. They attempted to crack English by showing the common vocabularies, phases, grammar usage and conversation so that readers can boost their English quickly. As a human being, time is our ultimate enemy we need to tackle with everyday. Such time-saving booster books were very appealing. They were all written in Chinese. They confused me: "Why should I read tones of Chinese books in order to improve my English?" If this strategy works, my English should have been excellent in high school!

  Those books are best-seller books in Hong Kong for two reasons. First, many Hong Kong people are eager to improve their English and believe these books can help them. Second, these books cannot help them therefore they should buy (but not really read through) again and again. The second point is funny and powerful. I have read a book called "One Up on in wall street". Peter Lynch,a super successful stocks investor, said(I say with my wordings here):"What makes a pharmaceutical company thrive is not inventing medicine that can cure illness soon, but to turn patients into chronic-disease sufferers who are relied on those medicine."  The same trick works on these "English cracking books"!

  Then I stepped into another book store. It was a book store selling books and magazine from mainland China. There were also many "English cracking book" but a magazine caught my eyes. It was called Crazy English Echo. I picked up and leave through the magazine. I found inside English poem, dialogues of a movie, excerpt of a famous book, some international news, geographical documentary, conversations or speeches on specific topic and song lyrics,etc. It also came with an audio CD. I bought it and copied the MP3 into my smartphone. I listened everyday when I was commuting to work. To my surprise, those audios were "raw material". That means these were natural conversations with real tone and pace but not some actors speak artificially. I am frustrated at first because I did not get used to the "accent" of native speakers. In order words, I was too comfort on English with Cantonese accent. Then I listened the same audios many times and also read the scripts. I discovered I could take up the pace. I could catch the content by "hearing without listening"(lyrics in sound of silence). There are so many funny topics and I never got bored of them!

  I wondered company from mainland China can publish such fantastic magazine but why don't be Hong Kong. Are Honk Kong losing competitiveness? It may be right. But I finally find the crucial factor. It is because "Long tail business" works in China but not in Hong Kong. Let talk about it next time.